Wildfire's Daughter
by poetikat
Summary: 330 years after her father saved her from a fate similar to that of her older brothers' by hiding her on Midgard, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Hel Lokadottir, alias Darcy Lewis, finds herself in New Mexico monitoring a suspiciously active Bifrost. The last thing she expected to happen was for her meathead uncle Thor to arrive, throwing her perfect undercover life into total chaos.
1. Agent Lokadottir

Hel looked at the sheaf of papers she'd printed out and sighed deeply. Three hundred odd years of keeping an eye out for signs of heightened inter-realm travel via the Bifröst by the Æsir, and after centuries of next to nothing, all signs were pointing to New Mexico being the new Midgard-Asgard Grand Central Station. This was, in short, Not Good.

At the sound of her sigh, Fenrir's ears pricked up and he lifted his massive head from his paws to look at her. _'What is it?'_

"Trouble," she said grimly.

_'Earth trouble?'_

"I only wish." She pushed her chair back from her desk and stood. "I need to tell Nick."

Her brother, who resembled not so much a wolf at the moment as an enormous pile of fur and claws taking up half her office floor, lumbered to his feet as well. _'Want a ride?'_ he asked, giving her a big doggy grin.

"I really shouldn't," Hel demurred. After all, as the senior-most field agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., having been with the agency since it was the S.S.R., she had a certain responsibility to maintaining the company's image of efficiency and respectability.

_'You know you want to,'_ Fenrir wheedled. _'I'll get you there faster than if you go on foot.'_

"No playing bowling with the baby agents," Hel said firmly.

_'Deal.'_

Hel stuck the papers between her teeth to free up both her hands, grabbed hold of Fenrir's shaggy fur, and hauled herself up onto his back.

Screw respectability. If she had to go deliver 'Oh shit no' level news, then she was at least getting a wolf-back ride from her little brother out of it.

Fenrir waited just long enough for her to tuck the papers into the waistband of her trousers and twine her fingers into his ruff before he burst out of her office and into the corridor.

_'GANGWAY!'_

"Make a hole!"

Agents dove to either side as Fenrir thundered toward the end of the hall, and the stairwell.

"Move it!"

"Hel?" Agent Coulson called out as she and Fenrir drew closer.

"Nick's office," she yelled back.

They barreled through the door to the stairwell, took three flights of stairs in three giant leaps, sped out the door into another corridor, and came to an abrupt stop twenty yards down right outside the director's office.

"I thought I made it clear that running in the halls was to be reserved for emergencies only, Agents Lokadóttir and Lokason," Nick Fury greeted them dryly.

Fenrir beamed at the honorary title. He wasn't an agent – Hel had made certain that S.H.I.E.L.D. knew early on that, by æsir and jötnar standards, he was the equivalent of a gigantic eight year old. If he concentrated, he could shape-shift into a somewhat unnerving looking Midgardian boy, but strong emotions always forced him back into his true shape, and as odd as people found a prematurely gray child with burnt umber eyes, said child exploding into a wolf larger than most horses was far stranger. It certainly didn't help that, thanks to certain events in his early childhood, he was terribly shy and retiring outside of their Manhattan apartment and the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. It put serious limitations on where she could have her brother spend the work week, so she had asked for and received special permission to bring the giant furball to work with her. It was both easier and harder for their older brother, Jörmungandr, who refused to allow himself to be caught in so defenseless a form as a Midgardian child and instead spent all his time in his normal, five hundred foot long sea serpent shape just off the New England coastline.

"Hiya, Nick," Hel chirped. She slid off Fenrir's back and dropped to her feet. "And it was an emergency, kind of."

Fury looked between Hel, whose normally impeccable appearance was slightly rumpled from the ride to the office, and Fenrir, who stood twenty-one hands high at the withers. "Not an Earthly emergency, I take it."

Hel handed him the papers and flopped down in the chair across from his desk. "Take a look."

"Why don't you ever show me any respect, Agent Lokadóttir?"

"Because I've been around since long before you were a baby agent," she said with a sweet smile, and propped her feet up, combat boots and all, on his very shiny desk.

He scowled at her boots briefly and turned his attention to the papers. A few paragraphs in, and his eye widened slightly. By the third diagram, his eyebrow started to creep up his forehead. He reached the end and looked up at her, consternation writ large across his expressive face.

"I'm no astrophysicist, but this looks an awful lot like what you briefed the brass on when you first joined up."

"Bifröst One-Oh-One," Hel quipped. "How to identify common means of travel for the Æsir."

"Required reading for Level Five clearance and above," Fury said, nodding. "Someone here on Earth is studying this?"

"One Doctor Jane Foster, based out of New Mexico," Hel confirmed. "And you know how it goes."

Fenrir laid his head on Hel's shoulder. _'Where there's smoke, there's fire.'_

"I don't like the sound of that," came a mild as milk voice from behind Fenrir's bulk. Hel twisted around to grin at Coulson as he squeezed by to take the remaining seat.

"That's because you have a functioning brain," Hel said. "Well?"

"I agree," Coulson said. "If she's studying the Bifröst, that implies that there's something happening worth studying."

"And that means we need eyes on that project. Lokadóttir, think you can handle that task? You'll know better than anyone what to look for."

Hel gave an eloquent shrug. "Scientists are always looking for unpaid college interns, and despite my age, I only look like I'm twenty-one or twenty-two. Foster's no different; I checked her website. I'm going to need a better alias than the one I have for everyday use outside of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Helena Locke's laughably transparent, not to mention over seventy years old. Do me up a good background, make sure wherever I'm staying is clear for ginormous pets, and we're good."

_'I'm not your pet,_' Fenrir huffed. _'And the only reason you look like an adult is because Dad made sure you were born to Midgardians. If he hadn't told Fate to screw itself by hiding you away, you'd look like a kid.'_

"Don't be jealous, baby bro," Hel said, scratching him under the chin. "It just means that any æsir that come looking for me – if they ever wise up to the fact that I'm missing – will look for an elementary school kid and not a grown woman."

"We can pull out your old alias," Fury suggested. "The one you used during the first Gulf War."

"I like the surname, but Helene's a bit on the nose, considering that if it goes wrong, we might actually get an ás-hole or two in person, and depending on who it is, there's no telling how well I'll keep my temper," Hel said. Her hands drifted down to brush against the seaxes strapped to her thighs.

"If your relatives do show up, try not to call them ás-holes," Fury said as Coulson coughed to cover a laugh. "And there'll be no stabbing of the alien visitors until we've had a chance to interrogate them first."

Hel pouted at him cutely. She knew it was a cute look, because she'd tried it in the mirror a few hundred years before and discovered that when she widened her big, changeable gray-green-blue eyes in her porcelain-fair face and stuck her bottom lip out, men and women alike tended to cave.

"That hasn't worked on me in thirty years," Fury said, unmoved.

"It works on Býleistr and Helblindi," Hel said. "I just pout, and they immediately offer to teach me something new. I'm their very favorite part-jötunn."

Fury rubbed his forehead. "Can we get back on track?"

"Darcy," Coulson said. "You can use Darcy. It's my sister's name."

"Darcy Lewis," Hel said experimentally. "Darcy. I like it. Thanks, Phil."

Coulson nodded. "About backup. You are a certified field agent, but I don't know how comfortable you are with taking on this mission alone, considering its nature."

"I'm not taking it on alone; I'm going with Fen," Hel said. "But you're right. I'd like to have another field agent in the immediate area."

i_If you think I'm setting a foot outside the apartment while we're there, you're nuts,_' Fenrir told her.

"I'll make sure that Agent Barton is free to take the mission as well," Fury said. "His cover, since you'll share living quarters, will be to pose as your significant other. Of course, it's just posing, as I'm certain that none of my agents would ever break fraternization regs." He glared mildly at Hel with his one good eye.

She looked back at him with perfect innocence. "I have no idea what you're talking about. Agent Barton and I are scrupulously following the frat regs." They really were. There wasn't anything in there about platonic friendship – one that had evolved into Clint giving her his Oath after a particularly hairy mission a few years back. He wasn't her boyfriend. He was her soldier, her messenger, her hand, and above all, her friend. If she had to have a fake boyfriend for the mission, it was best it was Clint.

"That's what I thought," Fury said. "Keep not knowing anything. It's better for my health."

"Although if you want to get technical, 'boyfriend' would really only be the right term on Earth," Hel continued. "Given that I'm queen of the unrighteous dead, the halls of Helheim, and the surrounding savage lands of Niflheim, he'd be my prince consort. If we were breaking frat regs."

"You give me a headache, Lokadóttir. You really do." Fury shook his head at her. "Coulson?"

"Eventually, you're going to have to go along with getting diplomatic immunity as the leader of a foreign nation," Coulson said. "Keep tossing around phrases like 'prince consort' and 'queen of the unrighteous dead' and we'll speed up the process."

"I won't be able to have fun as a field agent anymore if you do that," Hel objected immediately. "Would you really do that to me, Phil?"

"Stop creating paperwork for me to do, and I'll stop threatening to take away your fun," Coulson shot back.

Hel shrugged. "You can't really do anything, anyway. Until the Æsir show up again, Fen, Jör, and I are essentially in WitSec."

He gave her one of his tiny, mildly amused smiles. "And an excellent job you're doing of it, too."

"What's the timeline for departure?" Hel asked, changing the subject.

"I'll get the paperwork for your covers to you and Barton in a few hours," Coulson said, "And I'll reroute any other applicants for internship to Doctor Foster through our servers so that you're the only choice. We should have you out of New York and in New Mexico by the end of the month."

"Great," Hel said. She let her feet fall to the floor with a thud and bounced up. "I'll go tell Agent Undercover Boyfriend – sorry, Barton – what's up."

'_I'll go download more books to your Kindle,'_ Fenrir chimed in. _'I have a feeling I'll be getting a lot of reading done while I'm cooped up.'_

"I'll pack the – er, yeah," Hel said. "Never mind." She'd box up her home-brewed mead when she got back to the apartment.

"And Lokason," Fury called out to them as Fenrir trailed after Hel out the door.

_'Yes, Nick?'_

"No running."

_'Boring.'_

* * *

_It's been quite a while since I've been active in fanfiction, and I'd love to know what you think. Feedback, after all, is love. :-)_


	2. Eat Lightning, Thunder Thighs

The blinding streaks of light surrounding Hel coalesced, and as they came together in one bright flash with a clap of thunder that was felt rather than heard, she stepped out into the living room and left the path to the other realms behind.

Clint looked up and tossed a lazy grin in her direction. "Took you longer than expected," he commented, not slowing down a bit as he scraped the knife in his hand across the oiled whetstone in the other. His keen eyes looked her up and down, taking in her heavy cloak and wool dress. "You detoured. How are things on Jötunheim?"

Hel swapped her seasonally inappropriate outfit for jeans and a t-shirt with a twitch of her fingers, sending her otherworldly clothing to the back of their closet. May in New Mexico was no time for head to toe wool. "It's tense," she said. She dropped down next to him on the sofa, keeping her hands wrapped around the ornately carved wooden box she'd brought back from Helheim. "When I arrived in my hall, there were three newly dead jötnar present, killed trying to take back the Casket of Ancient Winters. They asked me to tell King Laufey what had happened."

"Stupid question, but how'd she take it?" Clint asked.

"She was pissed." Hel gave him a half-smile. "But, you know, kind of proud they tried."

Hel would have been grudgingly accepted on Jötunheim simply for the sake of her mother, Angrboða, who had been half-jötunn when she lived and was an honored denizen of Helheim in death. But Hel wasn't just part-jötunn; she was also the only ruler of one of the three realms of the dead who would let the Jötnar pass through her gates – Odin controlled Valhalla and wouldn't dream of having a jötunn in those storied halls, and Freyja of the Vanir had a longstanding and potent grudge against the Jötnar that kept her from opening Fólkvangr to their dead – so she wasn't merely accepted, she was welcomed. And when King Laufey and her consort Fárbauti learned that Hel had her _own_ longstanding and potent grudge against the _Æsir_ for all that they'd done to her family, well. It wasn't long before they'd agreed to an alliance and a formal peace treaty between their two realms, and Laufey and Fárbauti's sons Býleistr and Helblindi had all but adopted her as unofficial uncles.

Their causes were her causes. Their struggles, her struggles. Their pride, her joy.

"How'd they even get in?"

"The back ways," Hel said, and she raised her eyebrows meaningfully.

Clint caught on instantly. "Your dad."

"It has to be. I only showed them the paths to different parts of Earth, and they already know the way to Niflheim," she said. "Dad left the knowledge in my head, but I've never taken the path from Jötunheim's stronghold to Asgard's palace."

"Which just leaves the question, 'why?'" Clint asked.

"That's why Laufey's pissed," Hel said. "Dad's the God of Mischief, not a sociopath. I don't think he'd set up jötnar to get killed for shits and giggles. Sure, Granddad Ás-hole and the rest of the House of Odin hate the Jötnar, but Dad married Mom, and Mom was half jötunn. This doesn't seem right to me."

"Does any part of that side of your family seem right?" Clint joked.

"I look forward to the day when they're all standing around, thinking Ragnarök's gonna come down on their heads like an avalanche, and we'll be on vacation in Tahiti or someplace, kicking back and doing terrible, monstrous things like enjoying free wifi and mixed drinks," Hel said. "Sorry, can't end the world today, too busy enjoying it. Rain check?"

"Your dad would be proud," Clint said.

Hel beamed. "You think?"

"He's a trickster," Clint pointed out. "Defying their big, bad prophecy is kind of a gigantic prank."

"I love the way you think," Hel said. "I knew I accepted your Oath for a reason."

Clint laughed loudly. "I thought it was for my stunning good looks," he said.

They moved as one, both of them setting their burdens down on the coffee table, Clint relinquishing his knife and whetstone easily, Hel almost reluctantly parting with her wooden box. He leaned back into the couch cushions and opened his arms to her, and she dropped into the seat next to him and leaned into his comforting warmth.

"Aww, you know you're gorgeous," she told him teasingly, running light fingers over his face. He had a pugilist's face, a hard jaw and a strong nose, broad, tanned cheeks and a surprisingly delicate mouth, intelligence gleaming in his deep-set blue eyes. He was thirty-eight now, thirteen years removed from his time as a sniper in the army, but military service had left an indelible mark on him, and unless he really felt like putting forth the acting effort, all his covers involved an army background. He'd been with S.H.I.E.L.D. since he was twenty-five, friends with Hel since he was twenty-eight, and Oathed and sworn to Hel's service since he was twenty-nine. Hel often thought that looked older than he should. She was just glad that his childhood hadn't done him worse visible damage than that. They were partners in the sub-standard family club.

"_I_ thought I accepted it because you got me blind, stinking drunk after that fucking mission and tricked me into saying yes while my faculties were impaired." She smirked. "I probably would have accepted it anyway after my hangover was gone, just for trying to get one over me."

He smirked back. "I don't even care if your dad's the original Silvertongue. You'll always be my favorite."

Hel leaned into him, letting him take her weight as she rested her head against his shoulder. "What did I miss while I was gone?"

"Picked up Foster's mentor from the airport," Clint said. "Doctor Erik Selvig. I'm not sure what to make of him yet. He's from Norway – from Trondheim, actually, where you grew up. He asked after you. I mentioned your cover major and your interest in Norse mythology, and he's familiar with all the stories. He's a skeptic, though. His only god is the scientific method."

"It would be nice to find out how Trondheim has changed," Hel said wistfully. "I haven't been back since I turned sixteen and got my powers. Does he have a sense of humor? I want to like him."

Clint's brief hesitation before answering told her everything. "He might?" he offered. "It could be subtle. Or buried really deep under a ton of jetlag."

"I'm sure I'll find out soon," Hel sighed.

"Sooner than you want," Clint said. "I almost forgot to tell you. Foster wants to take Selvig out to record another 'anomaly' tonight, and you're driving them."

Hel pulled back just enough to look her friend square in the eyes. "I call bullshit on you forgetting, Agent Badass."

"Yeah, I just wanted you to myself for a little while before I sent you out to watch the Bifröst," Clint admitted cheerfully. "I made you coffee to go. The thermos is on the kitchen counter."

"That's not the kind of drink I want," Hel muttered, but she kissed his cheek swiftly and sat up. "Thanks for making it."

"No problem," he said easily.

She flicked her eyes past the living room and down the hall to one of the two closed bedroom doors. "How's he doing?"

"He's been reading nonstop," Clint said. "Last time I stuck my head in to check on him, he'd shoved the dresser in front of the window to barricade himself in. You know what being this close to so much activity from the Bifröst is doing to the kid. Three hundred and fourteen years, and he still thinks they're going to come and do it to him again."

"My poor little brother's freaking out," Hel sighed. She flicked her fingers at the box on the table. "I brought an herbal tea and a tincture to mix with water or juice back from Helheim. The homeopathic stuff here on Earth isn't strong enough to keep him calm, and I'm not putting my baby brother on heavy duty anti-anxiety meds, even for a little while."

"I'll make Fen a cup when you go," Clint said. He grinned. "If only the Æsir knew how well herbs grew in the realm of the dead."

Truthfully, Hel thought, if she were trying to grow anything besides sedatives, poisons, painkillers, and the odd vision-inducing plant, her garden wouldn't produce half as much. Her kingdom wasn't alive enough for anything with more pep to it. But she had to admit, fertilizing her garden with Niðhöggr's waste and using the waters of the river Ífingr to water everything was a genius move on her part. Compared to how much effort she put into her little herb garden, Iðunn was lazy.

"The package with the black ribbon is for me, so please don't mix that up with Fen's tea," Hel said.

"Trying for a vision?"

Hel shrugged and reluctantly stood. "None of this is making sense yet, and I hate not having the answers. I'll give it a shot when I have a chance to sleep."

Clint nodded. "See you when you get back."

"Let's hope that it stays boring tonight," Hel replied.

She went to the front door and shrugged on her jacket and shoved her feet into her boots. It might be late spring, but the desert always got cold at night. After a cursory check of her jacket pockets to confirm that she was in possession of keys, wallet, and Taser, she backtracked to the kitchen to get her thermos of coffee, blew a kiss to Clint, who threw a hand up to catch it, and breezed out the door. The overriding thought going through her mind as she pulled on the rest of her outerwear and took off for Jane's lab in her car was, _'Tonight had better be uneventful as shit.'_

* * *

Of course, because being Loki's daughter meant that her luck was fickle at best, she, her manic, obsessive, temporary boss, and her manic, obsessive, temporary boss's jetlagged, humorless mentor were all out in the middle of nowhere when she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. _'Here it comes…'_

The swirl of green up in the clouds should have been beautiful, but to Hel it was just ominous. Æsir near her planet of residence was dangerous. And this time, it looked as though they meant to actually do more than pass by.

Still, she was a dutiful intern at the moment, so she spoke up, not quite able to keep the dread from her voice. "Jane? I think you wanna see this."

Jane and Selvig both looked in the direction she indicated. Selvig's face went slack with surprise, and Jane gaped. A scant second later, all Hel could see of them were two pairs of legs, as both of them had scrambled for a better view through the moon roof. She could hear them talking, but none of it registered. All she saw was the Bifröst growing larger and clearer, looming huge and threatening over the desert and over her life.

"Go!" Jane shouted down to her.

Hel put the van into drive and hit the gas. Only the very stern reminder that she was on assignment kept the van headed in the direction of the Bifröst and not back into town. She was many things, but right now she was first and foremost a seasoned S.H.I.E.L.D. agent of over seventy years, and she was duty-bound to get the information needed. Even if it meant driving _directly_ into a possible fate worse than death.

"Get closer," Jane demanded as she dropped into the passenger seat, her face shining with near-religious fervor.

"Oh, right, good one," Hel snapped, but she flattened the gas pedal obligingly.

The Bifröst shot down from the sky to open a gate with jarring violence, whipping up sand into a localized tornado.

"Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck," Hel chanted under her breath as she drove as close as she dared. Then the hairs on the back of her neck stood up again and she pulled the steering wheel to the left to take them out of its path.

"What are you doing?" Jane shrieked.

"I am _not dying_ for _six college credits_!" Hel shouted right back. She was _not dying_ at her _ás-hole relatives' hands_ for the sake of her mission.

Jane – _idiot_ genius – grabbed the steering wheel and yanked hard to the right, taking them right back into disaster-land. Their wordless, furious struggle took them straight into the heart of the portal, and they might have kept driving straight on through it if they hadn't collided with something large, heavy, and human shaped. Twin shrieks and a hastily applied e-brake saw the three of them out of the van and racing to check on the poor bastard that Jane had struck with her terrible driving skills. Well. Jane was racing, Selvig was hurrying behind her, and Hel was cautiously trailing behind, brushing her fingers over the seaxes, currently under an illusion of invisibility, that were strapped to her thighs, and tightening her hold on the Taser in her jacket pocket.

When she reached them, she stood back half a pace, looking at the ás from where she hovered watchfully behind Jane – again, _idiot_ genius – who was crouched at her car crash victim's side. It took a single glance for her blood to run cold.

She knew that face.

Her father, who was far more gifted at seiðr than she'd ever be, and infinitely better than the Æsir knew, had done a remarkable thing for Hel. She'd never met him in person. The longest he'd ever spent with her was when he was working whatever incredibly complicated bit of sorcery that allowed him to take her out of her mother when she had yet to be born, carry her through the back paths from Asgard to Midgard, and put her safely in a human woman's womb. But the whole time, he'd been whispering to her. The secrets of Asgard. The secrets of seiðr. The back paths. How to hide from Heimdall's sight and hearing. His life story. Who their family was. What their family looked like. The great tragedy of the Ragnarök Prophecies. That she'd probably have another brother soon.

_"For all of Thor's dimness, he's easy enough to love_."

Hel had believed that until she'd come into her divine powers at sixteen. When she finally had the power to do so, the first thing she'd done was take the back paths to the place mentioned in the legends where her baby brother was supposed to be, a desolate rock called Gjöll on the island Lyngvi in the middle of the great black lake Amsvartnir. And there he was. Oh, he was enormous, but he was exactly what she thought he'd be. A baby. Tied to a rock with a fucking sword keeping his mouth from closing.

The legends got that part a little wrong. It wasn't in his gums, and the pointy end wasn't facing up. By the time she'd found him, a year and a few months after they'd left him there to rot, the sword had completely split his tongue and had already begun to make its way out the bottom of his jaw.

She got him out of there post-haste, and did her first bit of intentional seiðr, too, leaving behind an illusion of her little brother still being tortured while she made off with him back to Midgard.

When he was well enough to tell her the whole story, that's when she found out who put the sword there.

Maybe their dad found their uncle easy enough to love, but Hel _hated_ him.

Whatever Selvig and Jane were saying was completely lost on Hel as she glared at her insensate uncle fiercely, daring him silently to wake up and make a move toward one of the mortals. She'd been waiting for a chance to pay him back for what he'd done for over three hundred years now. If he was aggressive enough, she could even get him with one of her seaxes, straight through the ribs. She was almost as good with them as King Laufey's niece Járnsaxa now, and they'd slide in easily, especially since he wasn't wearing…any…armor.

Hel turned her head to the side to study him from a different angle. No armor. No "look at me!" scarlet cape. And no Mjölnir. There was no good reason for a warrior of his caliber, especially one who was so proud of his accomplishments, to be down on Earth unarmed and unarmored. She wouldn't even need her seaxes to subdue him, probably. If she got the drop on him, she might even be able to take him out with just her Taser.

He rolled over, groaning, and stumbled to his feet. Hel flinched and readjusted her hold on her Taser.

"Hammer," her uncle growled, staggering almost drunkenly, then louder, "Hammer!"

"It's not here," she growled back. Jane and Selvig both looked at her oddly for that, but Thor completely ignored her.

"Jane, we have to take him to a hospital," Selvig said. He cast a wary gaze at the man they'd just run over.

"Father!" Thor roared. "Heimdall! I know you can hear me! Open the Bifröst!"

Jane blinked in surprise. "Hospital. You go. I'll stay."

Thor wheeled on them suddenly, and Hel's finger tightened convulsively on her Taser trigger. "You. What realm is this? Álfheim? Vanaheim?"

Hel had her Taser centered on his chest before he could take more than two long, angry steps in their direction. No one intimidated mortals she considered under her protection, no matter how much they annoyed her. "Midgard," she bit out. "You're outside Puente Antiguo, New Mexico, in the United States of America, North America, Western Hemisphere, Earth."

He sneered at her. It was an impressive sneer. "You dare threaten me, Thor, with so puny a weapon?"

Hel sneered right back. "Eat lightning, thunder thighs." And she pulled the trigger and watched him fall with great satisfaction.

"Ás-hole."

Jane and Selvig both stared at her once he fell unconscious again. She sniffed. "He was asking for it."

"That was a bit extreme, wasn't it?" Selvig asked mildly.

"You haven't met my little brother," Hel said shortly. "Jane has."

"Your brother Phelan?" Jane asked. "What does he have to do with – oh."

"Yeah," Hel said. "Oh."

Anyone who met her darling little brother in his human guise had to hear some version of their real background. The scar beneath his jaw was puffy and red, and the one bisecting his tongue was so thick and twisted that Fenrir had bent the Allspeak to his will to learn every sign language he'd come across because it was too damaged for him to speak properly. He was small for his age, pale and slight, with messy gray hair and shocking burnt umber eyes and the sweetest smile Hel had ever seen on anyone's face. Everyone who met Fenrir fell in love with him, and everyone who met him knew just what kind of family they'd been born into.

"Our uncle," she clarified. "Big, loud, blond, muscular. He was the one who fucked up Phelan's mouth. I have a grudge."

"But it wasn't the guy we hit, right?" Jane asked.

Hel shook her head. "No. But I never said my grudge was rational."

"Regardless, we still need to take him to the hospital," Selvig said, and looked pointedly at the useless lump of relative lying on the desert floor a few feet away. "And as he's not in the van, Darcy, if you would lend a hand?"

"Fine," she grumbled. "But I get the feet."

* * *

_Feedback is always appreciated!_


	3. You'd Be A Jungian, Too, In My Shoes

He was inside the lab. He was inside the lab, changing into Jane's ex's clothes, dismissing Jane like she was a servant and beneath his notice. Hel's hands clenched into tight fists at her sides, her nails digging deep into her palms. She hadn't been gone more than a couple hours – leaving Jane and Selvig behind at the hospital with a vague excuse about checking on "Phelan" – but it felt like she'd been away for days.

War. War was upon Jötunheim again. And it was all because of that stupid, blundering, bloodthirsty, arrogant, murderous buffoon who had the temerity to call himself her father's brother.

Each familiar face she'd seen on Jötunheim, alive and well, filled her with relief. The entire royal family was still alive, as were her brother's playmates Skaði and Hyrrokkin, and her favorite teacher, the wise, brave Aurvandil. Many of the warriors who'd taught her the art of fighting with her seaxes, and the scholars who trained her in seiðr specializing in illusions and manipulation of the elements, had survived the attack. But too many had died. Little Hyrrokkin was an orphan now, and Aurboða was a widow. Thor had the blood of her friends and loved ones on his hands, and he'd answer for it.

Of all the shocks she'd suffered since she'd first encountered the three newest denizens of her realm several hours prior – though there were several dozen more to welcome now, thanks to Thor and his friends – it was Aurvandil who delivered the greatest shock of all.

_He waved her off when she moved to help him sit up. "My wound is not mortal, little Hel, only nearly so. I wouldn't say no to some of your excellent numbing balm, if you have it, though." He gave her a pained grin._

_Hel didn't return it. "This just barely missed your heart, Aurvandil! Who did this?"_

_He sagged back into the moss-stuffed mattress, all his muscles relaxing at once as she peeled back the bandage covering his chest and smeared on the balm she carried with her as a matter of course. "That is a question with an interesting answer, and one that King Laufey and her consort and sons should be present for."_

"_My father did this?" Hel whispered. Her heart skipped a beat._

_Aurvandil fumbled for her hand – jötunn blue, like his own, the better to pass unseen beneath Heimdall's eyes without creating a blind spot – and patted it carefully. "There is more to it than that. Býleistr!" he called across the hall to the elder of the two princes._

"_Aye?"_

"_I have something to report from the attack," Aurvandil said. "Her Majesty the King and her family should know of it immediately."_

_Býleistr nodded and strode from the hall of healing. Long minutes passed in silence as they waited for him to return with the rest of the royal family. Hel couldn't think of anything to say. Her mind kept coming back to the awful, overwhelming fact right before her eyes: her father had nearly killed her favorite teacher. Her fingers trembled as she finished applying the numbing balm and re-covering the wound with the bandage, and Aurvandil caught her hand in his and gave it a squeeze of wordless comfort._

_At last, Býleistr returned, King Laufey, her consort Fárbauti, and their second son Helblindi all following close behind him._

"_What is it you have to report?" Laufey asked as soon as they were all assembled around his bed, heads bent close together and voices quiet._

"_Majesty, when I came upon the second son of Odin in battle, I held back some out of respect for our friend and ally, Queen Hel," Aurvandil began. "I thought to restrain him, and grabbed him by the arm. When the cold ate through his armor and my hand touched his bare flesh, the frost did not bite him."_

_Five pairs of ruby red eyes widened._

"_Go on," Laufey urged him._

"_Majesty, his arm turned as blue as my own. I believe –" He hesitated, and forged ahead. "I believe I have found your missing son."_

It was no wonder her dad's children were treated so horribly by Odin and the rest of the Æsir, Hel thought. If her dad wasn't Loki Odinson, but rather Loki Laufeyjarson, King Laufey's middle son, stolen from the temple he'd been hidden in for safety during the last battle between the Jötnar and the Æsir, then of course Granddad Ás-hole would take extraordinary measures to ensure that none of Loki's kids would ever be a threat to Asgard, let alone come near the throne. Of course that son of a bitch would make sure her dad knew in a thousand little ways that he was less favored, that he didn't measure up, that Thor was better.

After all, none of Hel's _cousins_ had been thrown from the Bifröst into the ocean, or tied to a rock with a sword through their mouth, or treated like a mindless animal, or – she smirked – banished to Niflheim to rule over the dead as an infant.

Hel took a deep breath and packed away all her anger as deeply as she could. If she didn't, she was liable to try to kill her "uncle" as soon as she saw him. Another deep breath, and she opened the door to the lab and stepped inside.

"Darcy!" Jane greeted her. "How's your brother?"

"Freaking out," Hel said curtly. "Bart's trying to drown him in tea and distract him with Pixar movies until your research project is gone."

Thor looked up from the box of Pop-Tarts he was pillaging. "You have a brother?" he asked with polite disinterest.

The moment their eyes met, the faces of the dead and dying jötnar flashed across Hel's vision, and her blood boiled. "You don't get to ask about him," she snarled. "You don't get to talk about him. You don't get to _think_ about him."

Thor held up his hands defensively. "Peace, Darcy. I was merely making conversation."

"Yeah, well, don't." Hel turned away from him abruptly and said to Jane, "If he starts flirting with you, don't fall for it. He's married with two kids." '_Married to the unrequited love of my dad's life_.'

"Sif and I have had an amiable divorce and we will remarry when I take over for my father," Thor protested.

"Sif? The Norse goddess of the harvest? Darcy, don't tell me you believe him," Selvig said. "He's delusional."

"Two options, Erik," Hel said. "Either he's crazy and I'm playing along, or he's really the Norse god of thunder and no one should get involved with the dude."

"I'm not saying I believe him, but isn't Thor supposed to be one of the good guys?" Jane asked.

Hel gave Thor a contemptuous look. "Good's kind of subjective. One person's hero is another person's monster."

Thor pulled himself up to his full height and said, sounding highly indignant, "I am no monster, Darcy. I defend the Nine Realms _from_ monsters. Indeed, I was only recently in a fearsome battle against vicious giants who would kill you as soon as look at you."

_Crack!_ Hel's hand lashed out and slapped him hard across the face before she could restrain the impulse. She didn't hold back her strength, either, and his head rocked to the side.

"And one person's monster," she said quietly as he looked at her in bewilderment, "Is another person's hero."

"Darcy!" Jane gasped.

"I won't apologize for that," Hel said, not looking away from Thor.

Thor rubbed his rapidly reddening cheek. "I do not understand."

"Obviously," Hel replied. If he understood, and if he were a better man, as good as her dad thought he was, then he'd be down on his knees begging her to forgive him. But she didn't have much faith in his goodness, so she'd keep her mouth shut and settle for glaring at him.

Thor studied her carefully, and she squared her shoulders and met his eyes firmly, not shrinking back from the man who haunted Fenrir's nightmares. "You are brave, for a mortal," he said finally, smiling a bit. A shadow of his wounded dignity remained in his gaze. "There is something about you, Darcy. I know not what it is, but there is something…."

Hel jerked her eyes away and took a step back, wary of the evaluating light that lit his eyes as he spoke. "We should feed your research project some more," she told Jane. "They can probably hear his stomach growling in the next town over."

Jane looked at her in relief, apparently pleased to have something to do besides watch her intern square off against the crazy body builder. "Right. Let's go to the diner."

Thor bowed to her and Hel. "After you, ladies."

"Yeah, I don't think so, thunder thighs," Hel said. "I don't want you at my back."

"Thunder thighs?" Selvig echoed.

"Very brave indeed," Thor said with a scowl. The strange, evaluating, calculating look was still there, blunted by reluctant amusement.

She scowled back. "Get your ás ass in gear and get moving already."

"I hear and obey, O keeper of the lightning," Thor said with another bow, and led the way out of the lab to Jane's van.

* * *

"_Oafish barbarian,"_ Hel muttered under her breath in Old Norse.

Thor's hearing was just as acute without his godly powers as it was with them, unfortunately, and he tuned out Jane, who was berating him for smashing his coffee cup and bellowing for another, and focused on Hel. _"How am I an oafish barbarian?"_ he asked in kind – sharply, arrogantly, as if she had no right to call his behavior out.

Crap. He was much louder than Hel, even at an indoor volume, and the fact that he'd addressed her in a dead language had not escaped the notice of the two brainiac scientists sitting with them at the table. Hel found herself the subject of two intensely curious stares as she replied, still in Old Norse, _"Do you think that, as a prince, you are above respecting and following the values and traditions of other cultures? Especially when you are a guest in this realm? Do you think that royal blood means that the world must bend to you, no matter where you are and what the circumstance?"_

"_I am nothing like that,"_ Thor argued.

Hel switched to English and pointed to the shattered remains of the mug on the floor. "In this realm, we politely ask the waitress to bring us another. Quietly. With no smashing of property that isn't ours."

Thor followed her finger to the mess he'd made, then glanced over to the counter to watch the waitress, Izzy, refill one of the regular's mugs. "I take your point," he said grudgingly. "Very well. I shall not do so again while in this realm."

"Promise?" Jane demanded.

Thor gave her a bemused little smile. "You have my word."

Hel snapped her fingers in his face. "Hey! No flirting with Jane. She deserves better than to be a fling for a married dude with two kids in tow."

They both pouted a bit, and Hel rolled her eyes.

"When your boyfriend told me you were interested in Norse mythology, he never said you knew Old Norse," Selvig said. "Let alone well enough to speak what is essentially a dead language."

"I'm full of interesting surprises," Hel said with a wink.

"That you are," Selvig said.

Hel's neck prickled as her ás-dar kicked into gear. She glanced around surreptitiously, trying to see what could possibly be going wrong now, and noticed that Jane and Selvig were both blatantly eavesdropping on two newcomers seated at the counter. She was about to settle in and join the eavesdropping party when Jane decided to actively participate in the conversation.

"Excuse me," Jane interrupted them. "Did you say there was a satellite crash?"

Oh. Shit.

"Yeah," camo hat dude said.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Selvig narrowed his eyes. "What did it look like, the satellite?"

"I don't know anything about satellites," camo hat dude said with a grin. "But it was heavy."

Thor put down his fork.

"I mean," camo hat dude continued, "Nobody could lift it."

MOTHER FUCKER!

Thor got up from the table and went directly to camo hat dude. "Which way?" he asked intently.

"Oh – uh, fifty miles west of here."

"But I wouldn't waste my time," his friend called after Thor as he barreled from the diner. "Looked like the whole army was coming when we left!"

When Jane – _idiot_ genius – actually got up and followed him out, Hel finally gave in and cursed, vehemently, at length, and in multiple languages.

"Why do I get the feeling that you know more about what is going on than the rest of us?" Selvig asked when Hel stopped for breath.

"Because you're a smart guy," Hel said. She fished her phone out of her pocket, punched in two digits, and stopped. "Can you keep a secret? Just for a little while? I don't think it's going to be secret for very long, honestly, and you can always tell yourself you're humoring me if it makes you feel any better about keeping things from Jane."

Selvig frowned, but he nodded reluctantly. "Very well."

"Good." Darcy finished dialing the number and waited to be put through.

"_Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division switchboard,"_ the bland electronic voice said. _"Please identify yourself by last and first name, occupation, and clearance level."_

"Lokadóttir, Hel," Hel said clearly. "Special agent, clearance level Nine."

"_Voice print a match to name,"_ the electronic switchboard operator said as Selvig sputtered in shock. _"Retrieving records. Please state your security phrase."_

Casting an eye out the window at her jack-ás uncle's rapidly retreating back, she said as blandly as possible, "Vikings are the unwitting mouthpiece of the Asgardian propaganda machine."

"_Voice print and name a match to security phrase,"_ the switchboard said after a tiny pause. _"Where can I direct your call, Agent Lokadóttir?"_

"Agent Philip Coulson, field number," Hel said.

There was no pleasant goodbye from the switchboard, just a click, a pause, and her phone was ringing again. Coulson picked up. "This is Coulson."

"You're at the satellite crash, right?" Hel asked. "They pulled you off Stark?"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. is at the satellite crash," Coulson confirmed. "Agent Barton called as soon as he got off the phone with you. Why?"

"A couple of loudmouths in the diner got my uncle's attention, and he's on his way there to pick it up."

"Anything we need to know?" Coulson asked after a brief, telling pause. She didn't blame him for the momentary silent freak out. The Level Five clearance "Holy shit gods are real" briefings were bad enough without finding out that one was headed your way.

Hel shrugged, then realized he couldn't see it. "As much as I'd like to say 'take him out with extreme prejudice', you're not a frost giant, and you're not one of Loki's kids, so I really don't think he's going to go all out. You're not an enemy. Plus he's depowered."

"That's good to know," Coulson said. "Thanks for the head's up, Hel. We'll see you soon."

Just like the switchboard, they both hung up without a goodbye, and Hel sighed deeply. That was that problem taken care of.

Selvig stared at her. She stirred her coffee and hummed a bit under her breath.

"You are a special agent," Selvig said blankly.

"For S.H.I.E.L.D.," Hel said cheerfully.

"And you are…Thor's niece."

Hel wrinkled her nose in distaste. "If I have to be identified by my relatives, can it be by my dad or my brothers? I don't like that side of my family. At all."

"If he is your uncle, how does he not know you?" Selvig demanded. "And why does the goddess of the dead live in the United States?"

"Dad smuggled me out long before Granddad Ás-hole could fuck up my life the way he did Sleipnir's, Jörmungandr's, and Fenrir's," Hel said. "I went back and got Fen out when I was old enough, but I was too late to stop it. They'd already – they'd tortured my baby brother. So I stole him, and they don't even know he's missing. And we're hiding out here. Part time, obviously, since I can't delegate everything about being queen of the dead."

"This is insane," Selvig muttered. "You would have to be a few thousand years old to be who you claim to be."

"Three hundred thirty," Hel corrected. "Our best theory – mine and some of Jötunheim's scholars – is that Ragnarök hits the reset button, but echoes remain in humanity's collective unconscious, and that's where all the myths come from. Jung's unus mundus and all that."

Selvig let out a startled laugh. "You're a Jungian?"

"You would be too, in my shoes," Hel said firmly. Some of the worse aspects of the myths crossed her mind involuntarily, and she shuddered. They had no way of knowing how many times they'd done this before, but she was beyond relieved that she couldn't remember previous cycles.

"Setting aside how incredibly improbable all of this is for now," Selvig said slowly. "Your brother's name. Phelan means little wolf, yes?"

Hel smirked. "We thought it was clever."

"It is clever," Selvig said. He stood and Hel followed suit. "I don't believe you – I think this is mad – but you seem to understand Thor better than the rest of us, and as Jane has rushed after him, she clearly needs our help."

"It's not that big an emergency," Hel said, shaking her head as they walked slowly to the door. "Like I told my colleague, the dude's depowered. That fight he was bragging about? I think he pissed off Granddad Ás-hole enough to get banished here, no fancy armor, no pretty cape or helmet, no powers, and no hammer. You know? This is some seriously epic hero's journey shit. He'll go, he'll try to get the hammer, it'll be an epic fail, there will be heartwarming life lessons, and when he's worthy again, he'll get his compensating-for-something weapon back and get the Helheim off this planet."

Selvig smothered another laugh behind his hand. "So there's no rush?"

"No, but we're totally on cock-blocking duty," Hel said. "I was serious when I said he was married with two kids."

* * *

"I didn't think it was going to be this soon," Hel muttered out of the side of her mouth as Coulson walked past her.

"Fury's orders," Coulson muttered back. "He does like his little displays of power. How that drama queen manages to run a covert agency is beyond me. We're returning it all as soon as we have copies for our scientists."

This had Nick Fury written all over it: agents in suits were boxing up Jane's research and equipment and ferrying it out to unmarked black SUVs as Jane tried in vain to argue them into returning it to its rightful place in her lab. Selvig raised his eyebrows at her in wordless question, and Hel did her best to convey an equally wordless reply of "I swear they're not the bad guys" and "I'll explain later".

Someone tugged at the iPod in her hand, and she looked away from Selvig to see one of the younger agents trying to pry it from her grasp. She flicked her eyes over him and had him pegged in less than a second. Former Special Forces. Ruggedly handsome, but in the same way that most of the male field agents at SHIELD were. Nothing standout about him. He tugged at her iPod again. Okay. Time to put the fear of a certain goddess into him.

She growled and went up on tiptoe. "Listen, you little shmuck, you may think you're a hot-shot field agent, but you have nothing on me, and if anything happens to my iPod, I will hunt you down and I will forcibly volunteer you to be my partner for every single knife fighting demonstration S.H.I.E.L.D. asks me to hold for the newbies until I get bored. Then Romanoff, Barton, and I are going to give you a hands on remedial session of all the field agent training, with you as the stand in for the dummy. Are we clear?"

He gulped. "Yes, ma'am."

She smiled sweetly and handed over her iPod. "Good. Remember, not a scratch."

He scurried off and climbed into the passenger seat of one of the SUVs, and with a final, polite smile and nod to all of them from Coulson, the agents all left, having accomplished their task of stripping the lab bare of all scientific equipment and research.

"So this Coulson is real," Selvig said thoughtfully into the silence.

"Feel like you've fallen down the rabbit hole yet?" Hel asked.

"If not down the rabbit hole, then certainly through the looking glass," he quipped.

"How can you even joke?" Jane demanded. "This isn't funny! None of this is funny."

Hel returned to her side and wrapped an arm around her comfortingly. She wasn't surprised to find her shaking with suppressed emotion. "No, this isn't funny," she said soothingly. "But I promise that S.H.I.E.L.D. will return all of your research notes and all of your equipment very soon. All they're doing is having their own scientists look at the data and calculations. Even if they build on your research, it's still top secret, so they can't publish squat."

"You know these people?" Jane asked incredulously. She twisted out of Hel's half hug. "Are you _with_ them?"

"Yes," Hel said. "Yes, I know them. And yes, I'm with them. I didn't know they were going to take your stuff, but I guarantee you it's going to be returned. Coulson told me. This whole production –" She waved at the empty lab. "It's very much not his thing."

"Is it your thing?" Jane accused her.

"What? _No_," Hel protested. "Look, S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't have an astrophysicist on the payroll with the clearance for this sort of information, so we're not exactly as on top of Bifröst activity as you are, but we've been watching for it since we were the Strategic Scientific Reserve back in World War Two. The only reason you got me as an intern and not another S.H.I.E.L.D. agent is because I'm the resident expert."

Jane crossed her arms and looked at her coldly. "So you understand the physics behind Einstein-Rosen bridges?"

"Not really, no," Hel said. "I'm the expert because I'm not exactly from here."

"I'm not following," Jane said.

Selvig cleared his throat. "If this is all to be believed, she's saying that she's not Darcy Lewis the intern, or Darcy Lewis the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. She's Hel Lokadóttir, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and queen of Helheim, and Thor's niece."

"And I'm a jötunn," Hel supplied helpfully. "Well, three-quarters. My mom was half-ásynja on her mother's side. And stop calling me Thor's niece. I don't care if it's true. It's insulting."

"I don't believe it," Jane said faintly.

"Believe it," said a very welcome voice from the doorway.

"Clint," Hel exclaimed, and broke into a wide smile. Then she saw who was hiding behind him. "What the ever-loving crap, Clint? What if Uncle Ás-hole comes back and Fen's still here?"

Clint shrugged expressively and ambled over. "He insisted. Wanted to face his fears while the bastard still doesn't have all his powers."

As soon as Clint wasn't providing cover, Fenrir darted across the lab and attached himself, limpet-like, to Hel's side.

"I thought your name was Bart," Jane said at the same time that Selvig, looking at Fenrir, said, "You cannot possibly expect us to believe that your little brother is the Fenris-Wolf."

"Clint Barton," Clint said easily. "Also of S.H.I.E.L.D. Not actually Hel's boyfriend. And big and furry is Fen's default size and shape. He's just going incognito right now."

"I'm impressed you haven't fur-sploded yet," Hel told her brother. "Your control is getting better."

He detached long enough to sign, _"Clint gave me too much special tea. I'm sleepy."_

She laughed. "Poor Fen. Drugged up to your eyeballs, huh?"

He nodded.

"Wait," Jane said, looking carefully at Fenrir. "If your uncle hurt Phelan – I mean, Fenrir – and Thor's your uncle, then was Thor…"

Fenrir nodded solemnly.

Her eyes went wide with distress. "But he seems so nice!"

Hel and Fenrir exchanged loaded glances. "He probably is," Hel said reluctantly. "Or he is to most people, at any rate. That's the thing. He hates jötnar – frost giants – and he's even more loyal to his dad than we are to ours. So since we're part frost giant, and there's a prophecy that says that one day Fen's going to kill Odin, it's not exactly a surprise that Thor just happily went along with whatever Odin said to do to Fen if it was going to put off the prophecy. But to anyone else, he's basically a good guy, if arrogant and spoiled, since he's, you know, crown prince of the Realm Eternal and all. Plus it was over three hundred years ago, so I'm hoping he's evolved as a person." All signs thus far seemed to point to 'no', but that was no reason to tell Jane how she really felt.

He was on his epic hero's journey. Maybe she'd get to beat sense and humility into him, and beat the prejudice out of him.

"You said last night that he, ah, damaged Fenrir's mouth," Selvig said. She nodded sharply, and he looked from her to Fenrir. "May I?"

He tightened his arms around her waist briefly, took a deep breath, and stuck his tongue out. His poor, mutilated tongue.

"The legend always said it was a sword in the gums," Selvig said. He sounded like he was trying to stay detached, but his horror came through loud and clear, and Fenrir tore himself from Hel's side and ran for the far corner of the lab. As soon as there was enough clearance on all sides, his hold on his human form failed and he burst back into his normal, enormous wolf-puppy shape and huddled against the wall.

Jane tottered to a chair and collapsed into it. "Okay," she said weakly. "I'm sold. You're Hel and he's Fenrir. And I'm studying the Bifröst."

Hel rushed to her brother's side and sank to the floor, letting him bury his face in her stomach as she stroked his head gently. "Glad we're all on the same page."

"What's the plan?" Clint asked.

"The plan is that I catch everyone up on what I know about what's going on that they don't know that I think they should know," Hel said. She stopped, went back over her words, and nodded. "Knowledge is power. Then Jane's gonna give my idiot uncle a ride to the site where the satellite is, and I'm going to follow behind in a different car at a distance and spring him from custody once he's had his epic fail. Then I'll bring him back here, alone, to find out exactly what his side of the story is, and after driving for fifty miles in a car with my uncle, I guaran-damn-tee you the next step in the plan is getting drunk enough to forget I willingly put myself that close to him for that long."

Clint smirked. "Good plan."

* * *

_Feedback is always appreciated!_


	4. The Disgrace of All Gods and Men

"So I'm going to give you this very fake ID and ask you nicely if I can have the mopey thunder god currently in your custody," Hel said to Coulson in lieu of a hello after a very nervous agent had escorted her to him. It was a different agent than the one she'd threatened at Jane's lab. Word had apparently traveled fast.

"Are you sure you want him?" Coulson asked. "This particular model of thunder god seems to be a bit defective, and he's missing his fancy hammer accessory."

"That's alright," Hel said cheerfully. "The warranty's still good on this one. Besides, he's on his epic hero's journey. Failure was expected."

Coulson shook his head in amusement. "Hel, I don't think Joseph Campbell applies to real life, even with your uncle."

"He's an old Viking god," Hel said. "I'm pretty sure he has truncated versions of the Hero's Journey on his epic quest for breakfast after waking up in the morning."

Sitwell and Coulson smirked and very noticeably didn't disagree.

How are you holding up?" Coulson asked, accepting the fake ID and handing it to Sitwell.

"Not too well," Hel admitted. "If it were just about anyone else from Asgard, with a few notable exceptions, I think I'd be managing this a lot better. But my objectivity is shot all to hell when it comes to Thor. So far, I've Tased him, yelled at him, insulted him, slapped him, insulted him some more… I think somewhere along the line we must have gotten off on the wrong foot," she said mock-thoughtfully.

"Keep it together," Coulson told her. "We don't have another agent to turn this over to. I know there's ugly history between you, but you're quite literally all we have."

"I'm trying," Hel said. "I swear, I'm trying."

Sitwell scanned in the ID and passed it back to Hel. "Tonight, when I go to bed alone, I'm going to thank whoever's out there that my family isn't as screwed up as yours."

"Bad idea," Hel said. "Someone might actually be listening."

"What are you planning to do with him?" Coulson asked.

"He's in the god version of time-out," Hel said. "I'm gonna take advantage of the fact that he's powerless and can't go home and see if I can teach him some important lessons while he's still here."

"Like what?" Sitwell asked.

"Like, the Jötnar are people too, so please knock it off with the senseless violence," Hel said. "I can't do shit about anything that's argr, he won't listen to me on that, and besides, Dad's been punished more times for that than I can count. It's pretty obvious Granddad Ás-hole has given anything argr his official stamp of disapproval." Hel waved off their inquisitive looks. "Never mind. But maybe he's grown up enough to entertain the idea that what he did to Fen was wrong. That being Loki's children doesn't automatically make us monsters."

"Good luck," Sitwell wished her.

"So how's he been behaving?" Hel asked Coulson as she followed him down the tunnel to the room Thor was being held in.

"Surprisingly docile," Coulson said. "All the fight went out of him as soon as he realized he couldn't lift Mjölnir. I tried to get some sort of response out of him, but even insinuating he was a mercenary for hire didn't get me more than a glare."

Hel cackled. "You called him a mercenary? Oh, that's precious. I hope you have video evidence of this."

"I couldn't help myself," Coulson said. "And we're the government. We have video of everything."

"I want to watch later," Hel said.

Coulson nodded and returned to their original subject. "Still, he hasn't said a word, except to say goodbye when I came in last time. I'm not sure why."

Hel kept her suspicions to herself. "I'm not surprised he isn't talking to you. He might think he's a prisoner of war."

"I didn't realize being a prisoner of war on Asgard was so civil," Coulson commented.

"Very civil," Hel said. "Well, after all the bloodshed is over, and provided you aren't on Granddad Ás-hole's shit list."

"And here we are," Coulson said. He slid open the door and stuck his head in. "You're being released, 'Doctor Blake'."

"What's up, Fight Club?" Hel greeted Thor.

Thor looked up at her with a painfully blank expression, and despite herself, despite everything, she winced in sympathy at how lost and heartbroken he seemed. "Darcy."

"Dude, that looks like it hurts," Hel said. She fished a Band-Aid out of her purse and ripped off the packaging. "Hold still."

He grabbed her wrist as she reached out, looking at her with what she felt was entirely unwarranted suspicion. "What are you doing?"

"You have a cut under your eye," she said. She flapped her trapped hand at him, waving the Band-Aid in his face. "I'm gonna cover it up so it doesn't get all infected. That's how you get blood poisoning, and then your skin will rot and fall off, and half your face will be all gross and corpse-like, and maybe you'll lose an eye, and it'll be all your fault because you didn't let me bandage it up."

Thor eyed the Band-Aid dubiously. "It is pink," he said. "And there are flowers on it."

"Yeah, so?"

"It is unmanly," he proclaimed. "I like it not."

Hel rolled her eyes and freed her wrist with a quick jerk. "Oh, suck it up and deal, you big baby." She had the Band-Aid over his cut before he could protest any further. "Come on. I'm here to spring you."

Thor meekly trailed her out to her truck. That got a reaction. "Where is Lady Jane? Where is her chariot?" He looked all around him, peering behind the cab of her truck as if, if he looked hard enough, he could summon more agreeable company.

"She went back to town when they took you into custody," Hel explained, opening the passenger door for him. "I'm the cavalry."

She took in his disappointed frown and added with a shudder of revulsion, "And just because I'm the next best option doesn't mean you get to flirt with me instead. That would just be…ugh. Creeptacular."

"Agreed," Thor said, grimacing.

Well, that was interesting. Hel had thought she would need to beat that into his head before he decided not to flirt with her. She gave a mental shrug and hauled herself up into the driver's seat, deciding to take his agreement at face value. She'd apparently made her dislike of him plain enough even for him to get the picture.

They rode down the dark dirt road in complete silence for fifteen minutes before Thor had to break it.

"_My father is dead."_

The words hung heavy between them. Hel thought of and discarded a dozen responses before going with trite and true. _"I'm sorry for your loss."_ She narrowed her eyes at him. "And I'm not speaking Old Norse with you."

"_Why not?"_ he asked. _"It is a comfort to hear. It reminds me of home."_

"Because I don't want to_ comfort _you," Hel spat. "It reminds me of home, too, and I don't want you anywhere near those memories."

She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. "Anyways, yeah. I'm sorry for your loss. He was kind of young to die, for an ás, wasn't he? Only around thirty-five hundred years old or so?"

"Indeed," Thor said, "But that changes things not, and I remain banished."

Hel nodded, and silence descended upon the cab of her truck again.

"You know much about Asgard and the Nine Realms," Thor observed after another few miles had passed. "Far more than any mortal should know."

"Was there a question in there, or were you just talking to hear yourself talk?" Hel asked, ignoring the delicate emphasis he'd placed on the word 'mortal'.

To her surprise, Thor smiled faintly at the insult. "I am merely thinking out loud, Darcy. And enjoying the familiarity that surrounds you."

"I thought we agreed you wouldn't flirt," Hel said.

Thor grimaced again. "By my honor, I was not flirting."

"Good," Hel said firmly. "Keep it that way."

"I do have a question for you," Thor said. "Two questions, actually."

"Go on," Hel said.

"How is it that I have earned your enmity? You seem to have known who I was the moment you laid eyes on me," Thor said. "And you dislike me far more than I would expect someone to if I were known to them only through the myths and sagas of the Viking people of Midgard."

"What's your other question?" Hel asked.

"How came you to know so much about the realms outside Midgard?"

"Okay," Hel said. "Nosy, but understandable. I'll tell you." Sort of. "But first, what's your best guess?"

"My best guess is wild and outlandish," Thor said.

"I like wild and outlandish," Hel said. "Shoot."

"It does not seem possible, but to dislike me so thoroughly, and so immediately, it would appear that you have an acquaintance amongst the monst – the Jötnar," Thor said, hastily correcting himself at Hel's glare.

"That's it," Hel said abruptly. "I was going to ease into this, but what the fuck. You and I are going to have ourselves a little history review. Here's a simple enough question: When was the last war with the Jötnar?"

"Over a millennium ago," Thor answered. "One thousand and forty-six years, to be precise."

"And before that, were the Jötnar Asgard's enemies?"

"They have always been Asgard's enemies," Thor said, bewildered. "What sort of question is that?"

"_Wrong_!" Hel shouted. "So totally wrong! It's obvious you're not exactly a scholar, but that's no excuse for not knowing your own kingdom's history, dude, especially since you were next in line for the throne up until a couple days ago."

Thor took in her outburst with wide eyes. After several tense seconds, his stunned surprise faded into an annoying little smile, one that was equal parts amusement and appraisal. "I may have heard something to the contrary during one of my lessons as a boy," he admitted grudgingly. "I paid it little attention at the time. The call of the training yards was far stronger than the call of the library."

"Hmph." Hel gave him one of her most queenly disapproving glowers and moved on. "For your information, O ignorant one, the Jötnar of Niflheim stood with the Æsir and the Vanir in the war against Svartálfaheim."

"I'd forgotten that," Thor said, and frowned thoughtfully. "Of Niflheim?"

"Jötunheim is the second home of the Jötnar," Hel said. "Do you know why there aren't any more frost giants living on Niflheim?"

"Given how intense your animosity toward me is, I assume my people played a part in it," Thor ventured.

"Once upon a time, a prince who wanted a fight took his brothers and some of his friends to Niflheim," Hel said, mockingly happy. "They killed every single jötunn they could find. They killed Ymir, the king. They slaughtered every last member of the various clans of ice and rime giants. They decimated the storm and mountain giant population. The survivors, mostly frost giants, led by Útgarda-Loki, fled to the last uninhabited realm with their greatest treasure, the Casket of Ancient Winters, and made a new home there. They called it Jötunheim. It shouldn't really be a surprise that when Prince 'Yay Genocide' became the next king, they decided to create a citadel to retreat to in the far north of Midgard, just in case he got it in his head to try and wipe them out again. Naturally, this was taken as an act of aggression against Midgard, so war happened anyway, and the Jötnar never got their bolt hole."

"That's not true," Thor argued. "My father would never have done such a thing."

"Never?" Hel asked quietly. "Not even when he was as young and eager to fight as you are?"

Thor pressed his lips together and didn't answer.

"That's what I thought."

She looked at him sidelong and sighed. That was probably enough for now. She reached out and flipped on the radio, instead.

"_Don't you know I'm not your ghost anymore,"_ Christina Perri warbled. _"You lost the love I loved the most."_

"From whence does this bardic music come?" Thor asked.

"_I learned to live half alive, and now you want me one more time."_

"It's a radio," Hel said, and valiantly avoided sighing again. "It's a modern Midgard thing. Just roll with it."

Heartlessness and betrayal serenaded them for the next three miles. It all felt strangely appropriate, after discussing Odin – after all, that was what he did, wasn't it? Tear love apart?

The next song was just as depressing, and Hel turned the radio back off.

"Whatever is on your mind, I would hear it," Thor said.

Hel frowned at the dark road ahead of them. "I just don't get it. Wasn't your sister-in-law half-jötunn? You know, Loki's wife? And their kids, aren't they all part-jötunn, too? You have jötnar in your family, Thor. How can you just – kill their kind, like it doesn't even matter?"

Thor shifted in his seat, and the silence spun out uncomfortably between them. They passed one mile marker, then another, and two more, and finally Thor answered her in a low voice. "They are Asgard's great shame. The disgrace of all gods and men."

It shouldn't have come as a surprise to hear Thor say it, and it shouldn't have hurt. It still did. It came out of nowhere, like a blow from his hammer to her stomach, and she hunched her shoulders defensively against his words. "I could tell, what with how you, your dad, and your brothers all treated his kids. I mean, you _threw_ the first one off the _Bifröst_, banished the _next_ one to Niflheim, and consigned the last one to an eternity of _torture_, and all while they were still infants? Dead giveaway that you hate your brother's kids."

"It is not a matter of hate," Thor said. "There were prophecies most ominous concerning his children. The Midgard Serpent is said to be my doom at Ragnarök. The Fenris-Wolf is foretold to be the death of my father, Odin AllFather. And Helheim's queen is phrophesied to ally with Surtr of Muspelheim and the Jötnar of Jötunheim in leading a great army of giants and undead fiends against the might of Asgard when Ragnarök begins."

"You put way too much faith in prophecies, and not enough in people," Hel said. "Prophecies aren't written in stone. Sure, Ragnarök's a guarantee, but not the specifics. Prophecies are just statistical predictions based on certain events playing out just right in order to set things up to happen exactly one way. The further out events are predicted, the worse the chance of getting things exactly right becomes. What you all did, it's like – okay, seriously," she interrupted herself with growing exasperation, warming to her rant. "The way you did things, it's like you knew just how unlikely it was that everything would fall into place perfectly, and decided to hedge your bets by taking these kids, no, these babies, and either banishing them or _torturing_ them, stealing them from their mom and dad and denying them any kind of family or parental love, thus guaranteeing that they'd _hate_ you and, therefore, would play their roles like good little pawns."

All was silent from Thor's side of the cab for a long, tense minute. "The AllFather would not be so cruel," he said at last.

"Weren't you just saying something similar about the AllFather and the Purge of Niflheim?" Hel countered. Honestly, she had no idea if Granddad Ás-Hole was that terrifyingly calculating and manipulative, but she wouldn't put it past him.

"I – well, what do _you_ know of prophecies, to speak so knowledgably of them?" Thor blustered.

"I have a blend of herbal tea I sometimes take at night that will let me have visions of the near future," Hel said. "Most of the time, I do nothing to change the outcome of what I see. If I think I have to, I'll work within the boundaries of what I saw so that the vision technically comes to pass, but in actuality never does."

"That sounds dangerously close to meddling in the affairs of fate," Thor said disapprovingly.

Hel scoffed. "What, and chaining a baby to a rock in the middle of nowhere with a sword through his mouth isn't?"

"Fenrir was no baby," Thor argued. "He was, and is, a monstrously large wolf, a beast in both form and mind."

"A puppy!" Hel shrieked. "He was a puppy, you moron! How old was he?"

'_Oh, shit,'_ some distant and deeply terrified part of her whispered. _'Stop it, stop it now, he's stupid, but he's not_ that_ stupid, he is GOING TO FIGURE YOU OUT.'_

"A full year, nearly long enough for a wolf to reach its full size, and more than long enough for it to become a danger," Thor told her.

"A full year," Hel echoed scornfully. "I know a seiðmaðr who spent the first sixty years of his life as an eagle. When he finally learned how to shape-shift into a jötunn like his parents, he was just a toddler, with a toddler's mind and a toddler's understanding of the world."

Grim satisfaction lit a warm fire in her heart as the blood drained from Thor's face.

"But it was done for the good of Asgard," he whispered.

"It was done for the good of absolutely no one," she shot back.

"He is destined –"

"You," she interrupted, jumping on his weakening conviction and infusing every word with disgust, "Tortured. A. _Baby_."

"I –"

Hel steamrollered right over his protestations. "And now the whole fucking prophecy's a moot point, anyway, if your dad's dead. Seriously, there's no moral high ground to be had when you're in the baby torturing camp. Your moral high ground is nonexistent."

Thor surprised her yet again. "I know," he said, so very slowly. It was almost like the words hurt to speak. "I know it to be so."

She took her eyes off the road for a moment, shocked that she'd managed to get through his thick skull. He was staring down at his hands with a sort of dull horror, looking as if he'd like nothing more than to either scrub them raw or cut them off at the wrists and cast them away.

She wondered if it was Fenrir's blood he was seeing on them, or the blood of the hundred or so jötnar he'd killed yesterday.

"Even if he forgives you," she said gently, knowing exactly the effect her words would have, "They'll never be clean again."

It was Thor's turn to brace himself against an unseen blow, hunching his shoulders and closing his eyes.

"All for nothing," Thor murmured.

"What's that?"

"What we did," Thor said. "If you speak truly, if prophecies are indeed so nebulous and unreliable, then all of it was done for nothing. What we did to Loki and Angrboða, what we did to their offspring –" His gaze skittered guiltily across to Hel's side of the cab, then right back to his hands, as if he couldn't look at her. "Everything. Pointless, destructive, cruel."

"That sounds ominously specific," she said. She gave herself a mental pat on the back for ignoring the perfect opening he'd left to insult his entire culture.

"Yes," he said, so quietly she had a hard time believing it was her boisterous, gregarious uncle. "There is more you do not yet know."

"Enlighten me."

"We do not speak of it on Asgard," Thor began, just as slowly and quietly as before. "You must understand; we were at a loss. After the last of my brother's monstrous brood – my brother's children, the last of my nephews, I apologize Darcy, I misspoke – after the last of my nephews from Loki and the giantess Angrboða was born, and it was confirmed that he was indeed the giant wolf of the prophecy that foretold the AllFather's death, the warriors of Asgard took swift and terrible action to ensure that such a thing would never come to pass." He shook his head. "No, my brothers and I did, not the einherjar. To claim otherwise is a lie."

"Go on," Hel said tonelessly.

"After we – afterward, my father, Odin AllFather, declared that the reason my brother's children were so m-unusual was due to their mother's heritage. Loki's marriage to Angrboða was dissolved, and she was executed for treason and the use of witchcraft upon a prince of Asgard."

Hel blinked hard as her eyes began prickling. "None of this is news to me," she said. Wonder of wonders, her voice hardly wobbled at all.

"With all his children gone and his wife dead, my brother fell into a deep depression," Thor continued. "None of us could pull him from his melancholy. For years, he barely left his bedroom. He hardly ate. He wasted away into a shadow of his former self. He spoke only to the Lady Sif, and even that was a rare event. He was pale and listless, and it was terrible to look upon him. None of us knew, until it was too late, just how truly and how deeply Loki loved his children. We had, for lack of a better word, broken my brother."

Hel could feel his gaze on her face, and found she had nothing to say. She was pathetically grateful he didn't comment on her overly-shiny eyes.

"It was our mother, Queen Frigga, who came up with the solution. It was too late to bring back Angrboða and his children, and Father wouldn't allow his children into Asgard under any circumstance, anyway, but perhaps, she thought, there might be a way to bring back the Loki of old. Her plan was risky, however, so risky that she consulted the Norns. They all told her the same thing: the son she got back would not be the son she used to have. Urðr herself said it was a certainty. But she wished him happy, and the AllFather wished an end to Loki's mourning, and I wished to have my beloved brother back, and we proceeded as planned.

"All books containing so much as a mention of the Ragnarök prophecy were removed from the library and put into Odin's personal vault. All four of Loki's children were removed from the official genealogical records, including Sleipnir, his eldest, born by unnatural and wicked means. All of Asgard's subjects were forbidden, on pain of banishment, to ever speak of Loki's relationship to the Midgard Serpent, the Fenris-Wolf, and the Queen of Helheim again. And a galdr to remove memories was performed on my brother while he slept – _Ow!_"

Thor hit his elbow against the door and smacked his knee into the underside of the glove compartment as Hel slammed on the brakes.

"What," she said flatly.

"A memory removal spell," Thor said cautiously. He watched her warily. "It did not take easily. First Freyja tried, and her order to him was 'Forget your children', and he fought it, even deeply asleep. Then Frigga tried on the second night, and she changed her words, and her order was 'Forget that they are your children', and he fought this too, though eventually it succeeded. He still loved them, though, and his grief was palpable, so finally, on the third night, Odin took a turn, and he ordered Loki, 'Forget that you ever loved them, and give Asgard your loyalty instead', and this my brother fought harder than the last two spells, but the AllFather's might overwhelmed him, and when he awoke on the fourth morn, he grieved no more."

"You bastards," Hel whispered. She closed her eyes and just breathed, in and out, until she was reasonably sure she could address him without stabbing him with one of her ever-present seaxes. "And was he?" she asked without opening her eyes. "Was he different?"

"Yes." Thor's voice was raw with old, unhealed loss. "Yes, he was different. He was harder and sharper than before. His pranks were cruel and his taunts were barbed. We should have left him to his grief."

"Stupid, arrogant, high-handed, prejudiced, _æsir_!" Hel exploded. "You _broke_ him! You were _warned_ what would happen, and you did it anyway! Do you really not see what you did?"

"No," Thor said. "I see exactly what we did. _We told my brother to forget how to love_."

Damned Æsir had little talent for seiðr. It needed finesse, a strong connection to the natural world, and above all, a delicate touch. The Æsir were all about brute strength and blunt force. And they'd done a _memory spell_. It was like doing open-heart surgery with a butcher's knife.

"I swear, Thor, if I didn't think it would cause an interplanetary diplomatic incident, I could happily kill you," Hel said. She took a final deep breath and started up the truck again.

Thor laughed, a sad, wet little laugh. "I think I might let you."

She snuck a look at him out of the corner of her eye and flinched back in shock. Thor was staring blankly out the window, heedless of the tears leaking from his eyes and dripping down his cheeks into his beard.

Her uncle, Thor the giant-killer, was crying in her passenger seat. Would wonders never cease?

"This is Asgard's great shame," he said hoarsely. "Not my brother's children. What we did, that is the disgrace of all gods and men." He tried and failed to smile at her. "I apologize, Darcy. I would ask you not to judge me too harshly, but I fear you may already have the measure of me."

Hel nodded awkwardly. How was she supposed to respond to that? To sincere remorse? She still thoroughly disliked him, but it was disquieting to see him like that. Like there was more to him than killing jötnar and stabbing puppies. She'd reserve judgment and see if it stuck.

"I feel I must tell you," Thor said after several miles had passed. "I have fathered one child. Not two."

Hel cocked her head at him in silent invitation to go on.

"Ullr is not mine, although I am raising him as my own. Sif became with child while I was on Vanaheim doing battle with bandits after our divorce." He didn't sound upset, though his voice was still rough from crying. "He has Sif's hair and coloring, but neither her eyes nor mine. She loves his father more fiercely than she and I have ever loved each other, and even were I to ascend to the throne we would not remarry."

"Why are you even telling me this?" Hel asked, outwardly calm.

Thor finally looked at her again, and he gave her a small, sad smile. "It seemed like the thing to do," he said. "I thought you would like to know that my brother still has a son running around within the walls of the palace. Perhaps it is that familiar air you have about you that inspires me to confide such things in you."

Hel's brain stuttered to a halt.

Another half-brother. She had another baby brother. And this one hadn't suffered like the rest of them.

She pulled up what little she remembered about Ullr from the myths and sagas she'd read, over and over and over again over the course of the past three centuries, and came to the conclusion that she absolutely had to introduce him to Skaði.

"I think you just want me to stop getting in the way of your flirting with Jane," Hel half-joked. She was going to completely ignore Thor's invitations to share secrets and be open with her emotions until she was damn well ready. And she just plain wasn't ready to deal with news as momentous as what he'd dropped in her lap.

"Of course," he agreed. His smile went almost soft around the edges. "You remind me of him, you know. Of Loki, when we were young."

He reached out to brush back a stray strand of hair that had fallen across her face, and froze when she flinched away violently. "Darcy, again, you have my apology –"

"I'm not human," Hel said levelly as soon as her heartbeat went back to normal.

"Yes," Thor said. "I had gleaned at least that much from our conversation."

"My mother was a jötunn."

She tightened her grip around the steering wheel and braced for impact. Any moment now, her uncle would attack. She was a jötunn, he was Thor; killing her people was practically his raison d'être. Her best bet, since the cab of the truck was too tight for any sort of fight, was to run the truck off the road and crash if he moved to attack, and then to flee the scene while he was still dazed from impact. She still had all her strength and vitality. He didn't. Yes. Good plan. _'Any moment now.'_

"You say 'was'," Thor said, deliberately gentle. "If her death was my doing, I am so sorry."

Hel gave her head a tiny jerk from side to side. "Týr and Víðarr did it."

"…Would you like an apology on my elder brothers' behalf?"

"I don't want _anything_ from them," Hel said vehemently. "I want them to stay away and leave me alone."

"And no doubt you wish the same from me as well," Thor said.

"I want to scream, and cry, and beat you until you're black and blue," Hel said. "I want to run away from you as fast as I can, and I want you off this planet, and I still kind of want to kill you a little."

She wasn't about to tell him anything about Fenrir, and if he asked, she would probably have to reconsider wanting to only kill him a little bit.

Thor's broad, open face showed his hurt at her bluntness, but he accepted it without protest. It almost seemed too easy, and for a moment Hel thought to look for an underlying motive to his simple, sad acceptance, but plots and clever schemes were in her father's nature, not his big, blond brother's. Thor was loud and obvious, and didn't have the patience to lull her into a false sense of security.

"Ask," Hel sighed as Thor very clearly bit back a question.

"Please do not think I ask this out of suspicion," Thor said, "But what is a half-jötunn girl doing on Midgard?"

"Hiding," Hel said, and she couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice. "Hiding from the Æsir."

"Why? Have you committed a crime against Asgard, that my people would seek you out?"

Hel laughed, a hard, sharp, humorless sound, and Thor reacted as if she'd reached out and stabbed him. "I was born, you foolish, naïve, clueless ás. My crime was being born. My dad's side –" She broke off sharply.

"And you dwell on Midgard?" Thor asked quietly. "How came you to be here?"

"I think I'll keep some secrets to myself, if you don't mind," Hel said. She knew she'd blown it; like a rookie agent, she'd let her emotions get in the way, and now there was no chance that Thor wasn't aware of exactly who was in the driver's seat next to him. All she could do was throw what little faith she had in the goodness her dad swore her uncle possessed and pray that he wouldn't push her to actually say it out loud.

"No, I shall respect your secrets." Thor took a shaky breath and asked her hesitantly, looking at her with sorrow in his eyes, "Where does this leave us?"

Hel pointed straight out the windshield at the twinkling lights of Puente Antiguo shining in the distance. "We have booze at the lab. We're going to go drown our sorrows and get fantastically drunk, and we'll deal with reality in the morning."

Thor brightened. "A truly excellent plan."

This time, Hel held still when he reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear. She trembled as his he lingered, but he just smoothed her hair back with his huge hand and retreated.

"If we were kin, Darcy, I would shout such glad tidings to the heavens for all the realms to hear," Thor told her, and the words he left unspoken dripped with regret. "I know I am no hero in your eyes, but I would be proud if you would deign to consider me your friend."

"I –" Hel reached for words and failed to find them. Then inspiration struck. "You want to be friends?"

"Yes, very much," Thor said.

"My little brother is at the lab," Hel said. "You are now officially on a secret mission. It's called 'Don't Scare the Abused Kid'. If, by the time I'm done in New Mexico, he decides he's alright with me having a big, loud, muscular guy as a friend, then you get your wish."

"Your brother?" Thor looked uneasy. "The brother I am not allowed to ask, speak, or think about?"

"Yeah. That brother. He'll be there."

Thor nodded in understanding. "I shall devote all my skill and attention to this mission."

"He's _little_, Thor, and he's super stressed out right now," Hel emphasized. "Be _quiet_, be _nice_, and move _slowly_."

"I give you my word, Darcy," Thor said gravely. "I will not let you down. Either of you."

Privately, Hel had her doubts.

Thor had been letting the children of Loki down for centuries. Why should tonight be any different?

* * *

_Feedback is always appreciated!_


	5. Is No One Else Genre-Savvy?

Sunlight was a hideous, evil thing out to destroy her, was the first thought that crossed Hel's mind when she woke up the following morning with a pounding headache. The second thing –

"Why are my clothes wet?" she groaned, flinging an arm over her face to shield her eyes from the evil, evil sun.

Clint answered from inches away. "Drank your vision tea. Got up in the middle of the fucking night. Said you had to talk to Laufey. Came back with ice all over your clothes. Fell back asleep."

Hel strained her memory. It was vaguely familiar. "Okay." _'As a matter of fact…'_ Hel smirked to herself and sat up slowly. She had a feeling she'd royally blown a hole in her dad's plans. Oh well. He'd thank her later.

Clint mumbled something inaudible and rolled over. He didn't sound like he was in much better shape than she felt, which was hilarious to Hel, and a total act, since he'd stayed sober all night. Hel had surreptitiously siphoned off the alcohol content from every glass he'd had and transferred it to Thor's, much like they did on any mission they undertook together when they had to drink socially with a target. She'd trusted Clint to watch her back while she indulged for once, knowing he wouldn't hesitate to put an arrow through Thor's eye if he made one wrong move toward Fenrir.

"Darcy!" Thor boomed. "You have awakened! Come, join us in our morning repast."

Hel groaned louder and staggered from her makeshift bed on the floor. Thor was apparently the only one besides Fenrir who was wide awake and fully functional. Jane only seemed half dead, having had just one glass of her mead the night before. Hel had seen corpses livelier than Selvig, who sat hunched over his untouched cup of coffee with head cradled in his hands. Fenrir was sitting next to him, kicking his feet beneath the table absently as he watched Jane putter around the kitchen, Thor helping and hindering in equal measure.

"Alka-Seltzer?" Hel asked, making a bee-line for the cabinet and the glasses. A rustling came from the pile of blankets she'd crawled out of, and Clint threw a bottle to her. "Thanks."

"I'm never drinking with you again," Jane swore when Hel handed her a glass full of water, fizzing Alka-Seltzer, and a dropper-full of her own herbal hangover remedy. "What do you even use to brew mead that strong?"

"Hey, if the regular stuff doesn't affect you, it's clearly time to start your own brewery," Hel said. "And I'm not telling. Those are proprietary recipes." She frowned at Thor. "I thought you'd at least have a tiny headache this morning. You were pretty plastered last night."

"It takes far more than that to bring me low," Thor informed her. He chuckled at her clear disappointment. "Consider it something to look forward to. I am, after all, your elder, and have centuries more experience drinking than you do. Only Váli and Volstagg can outlast me in a contest of drinking these days."

She gulped down her own glass of her hangover cure and slipped her hand under her hair, where, carefully hidden, she let it turn a stark, pale blue and ice-cold to the touch, and applied it to the back of her neck. "Ohh, that feels good." She squinted at Thor. He looked different this morning. "Where's your Band-Aid?"

He inclined his head at the table over her shoulder. "I have given my bandage of bravery to another young warrior."

Hel turned, and sure enough, on the underside of Fenrir's chin was a bright pink Band-Aid covered in flowers. She raised her eyebrows at him. "That's a little unsanitary, baby bro."

He jutted his chin out defiantly. _"It's mine now."_

A flash of memory from the night before swam to the surface of her mead-soaked brain, and she stifled a snort. "Did you really ask him if his hammer was compensating for something?"

Selvig clapped his hands over his ears as Thor roared with laughter. "That he did," he said heartily, apparently not offended in the slightest. "That, and a great deal more."

_"I didn't say that,"_ Fenrir told the room at large, fingers flying as he came quickly to his own defense. He grinned impishly. _"I said that my sister said his hammer was probably compensating for a smaller hammer downstairs."_

"Oh, you're a complete brat, you know that?" Hel said. "Don't rope me into your crazy shenanigans." Sometimes – not often, but sometimes – she wished Fenrir hadn't spent the last seventy years of his childhood surrounded by the sort of people drawn to S.H.I.E.L.D. For such a sweet kid, he had a terribly adult sense of humor.

"It gets worse," Clint mumbled from beneath the blankets. "Thor's a real ás-hole, alright. Your brother kept insulting him, and Thor kept on using me as his interpreter, so I was making up shit that didn't sound as awful, and then Phelan made that crack about the hammer, and that jackass started laughing like crazy. He understood everything. What kind of thunder god hero pulls a dick move like that?"

"A drunk one?" Jane suggested somewhat disapprovingly.

"I was not quite so deep in my cups that early in the night," Thor said. "I was merely enjoying the breadth and creativity of young Phelan's insults. Have you any more for me?"

Fenrir smirked. _"Tons."_

Hel had to pinch herself, both to check that she was awake and to remind herself not to rush over and fling her arms around her brother, who, at his young age, would be terribly embarrassed by the show of affection. Her baby brother, her Fenrir, hadn't been this open and relaxed since before they left New York for New Mexico. Where was the terrified bundle of nerves from yesterday? She pinched herself again surreptitiously and re-examined the scene. Fenrir had the largest mug in the lab in front of him filled to its lip with his special tea, and if the two empty mugs next to his place were any indication, he'd been drinking steadily since he'd woken up. He'd chosen a seat with his back to Clint, facing the kitchen but with a clear view of the glass wall out to the street. And his eyes were carefully tracking Thor's every movement.

Okay, so she hadn't woken up in an alternate reality. Good to know.

Last night, Thor had faltered when he'd caught sight of Fenrir hiding behind a deceptively casual Clint. Hel knew that they were both only pretending mutual ignorance out of some sort of warped desire to keep the peace, and it was really only a matter of time before it all fell apart, but the unfeigned horror on Thor's face when he saw just how young, and how small, Fenrir was when he looked human was something she was going to cherish forever.

Surprisingly, he'd kept his word. He'd given the bulk of his attention to Jane, answering her questions about the Bifröst to the best of his ability. He'd separated fact from myth for Selvig – yes, he did have nine brothers, though he was Odin's oldest legitimate son (this was news to Hel, who was certain that Thor was one of nine, not ten) – and told them stories that hadn't ever made it into the sagas on Midgard. He'd talked weapons and battles with Clint, carefully avoiding bringing up anything to do with fighting or killing jötnar. And the whole time, he'd been patiently watching Fenrir from the corner of his eye, not raising his voice too loudly or moving too quickly, and always addressing him gently, with a kind smile, when Fenrir summoned the courage to attract his attention.

Hel had known that Thor was a parent, but it had been an abstract concept to her. Seeing how good he was with kids – how good he was with Fenrir – was just bizarre.

"No nightmares last night?" Hel asked Fenrir. The purple-blue smudges beneath his eyes were lighter than they usually were in the morning.

Fenrir gave Thor a significant look and twirled his finger. Their uncle chuckled and turned around obediently, and once his back was turned, Fenrir signed, _"Same one as always, but Thor woke me up. He said he'd smash everyone's heads before he let them hurt me. He'd even smash his own head."_

_"How do you feel about that?"_ Hel signed back.

_"WEIRD,"_ Fenrir said emphatically. _"There has to be a word for being rescued from your nightmare by the subject of your nightmare."_

_"I think the word you want is irony,"_ Hel told him.

Fenrir snickered briefly before sobering, and it took him several aborted tries before he found the words he was looking for. _"Do you think maybe Dad was right about Thor? He's not how I remembered him."_

_"He's probably right about a lot of things,"_ Hel said. _"Maybe he's right about Thor. But I don't think he's earned our forgiveness yet."_

_"Who said anything about actually forgiving him?"_ Fenrir asked, looking at her like she'd completely lost her mind. _"He wants to make it up to us. Let's let him. Let's make him ours_."

Hel slowly smiled. Stealing Thor's loyalty away from Odin was a plan worthy of the sons and daughter of Loki. She was also incredibly glad that she always obscured their hands from Heimdall's sight to ensure privacy. _"I like it."_

Thor turned back around when Fenrir cleared his throat, and broke into a wide smile as he was very seriously informed, _"I've decided that my sister is allowed to be your friend if she wants."_

"Your trust in me is well placed, and I shall not abuse it," Thor promised him. "This I swear to you."

Hel set down her empty glass and patted him on the arm. "I know you won't, dude."

"A little help with the food, please?" Jane interrupted, and Hel darted around Thor, who at the moment looked very like he wanted to grab her up in a hug like she did Fenrir.

"We are at your service, Jane," Thor said with a courtly bow.

Jane rolled her eyes and turned back to the food, affecting indifference to his charm, but her red cheeks gave her pleasure away. "Just take the plates to the table, okay?"

Thor bestowed another brilliant smile on her and picked up two plates. Hel quickly scooped up the other four and ferried them over, getting impressed looks from everyone but Fenrir, who'd seen it before, and Clint, who was still hiding in his blankets (and had also seen it before).

"I didn't know you'd ever waitressed," Jane said as Hel set them all down.

She swept Jane a playful curtsey, plucking at the sides of her short skirt. "You're looking at the best barmaid in Trondheim, for the short time I was there."

"You were a tavern wench?" Thor asked, and at Hel's smirk, he frowned deeply. "Such rough work is not fit for you. Men who frequent those establishments have little respect for tavern wenches, and if they are men with no honor, they would think nothing of taking advantage of your youth and innocence."

"Okay, first of all, I," Hel said, pointing to herself, "Am a kick-ass seiðkona, and not some damsel in distress. Any barfly who tried to get fresh would have been on the receiving end of some very nasty seiðr. Secondly, you," and she jabbed her finger at Thor, "Don't get to be all over-protective now that we're buddies." Yeah, maybe she hadn't had any powers that early in her life, but she did have memories, knowledge, and an excellent glare, and the stories the men told were worth occasionally getting patted on the butt by a drunken customer. And if she'd made a list of the worst offenders and come back and cursed them with impotence once her immortality and magic had become accessible, well, that was no one's business but hers.

"What's say-ther?" Jane asked curiously. Hel stifled a laugh at her careful over-pronunciation.

Hel held up her hand, and for a moment it seemed like light was physically repelled by her skin as shadows drew closer and clung to her fingers. They gathered in her palm, and with a thought, the formless sooty black wisps turned into a clear frozen snowdrop, its petals streaked through with gray. She handed the ice flower to Jane, who took it gingerly to study in awed silence. "That's seiðr. Magic. It can be used for just about anything. A seiðkona is a woman who uses seiðr."

Thor looked amused. "Shadows, Darcy?"

Hel shrugged. "It happens with jötnar who have more magic than others. Other elements start creeping in besides ice. It's always been shadows and darkness for me. I know Býleistr, King Laufey's eldest, can do the most amazing things with lightning, just like his dad, Fárbauti, but Fárbauti can call down storms, too, since he's half-storm giant, and Býleistr's no good with rain. Helblindi's more normal, since the only nature based seiðr he's really good with is ice, but he can do a bit with shadows, too, if he puts in the effort."

She seated herself and began eating, ignoring Thor's speculative look.

Her cell phone and Clint's both chirped to indicate text messages almost simultaneously, just as the back of her neck began to prickle ominously. Clint swore under his breath and fought with his blankets, and after a moment, called over to Hel, "Check your messages."

She did as she was instructed, wondering what could put such clear amusement in his voice. Apparently, Sitwell had forwarded them another S.H.I.E.L.D. agent's text to him about "Xena, Sanjuro, Falstaff, and Robin Hood" heading their way. Snickering, she put her phone back in her pocket and called back, "Nothing to worry about. I'm just glad we're eating now."

"So what do we do now?" Jane asked after everyone had eaten their fill.

"Now I learn to live on Midgard as Darcy does," Thor said. "My father is dead and I remain banished, and I am still unworthy of Mjölnir. Until such time as my mother changes her mind and wishes my return, my brother Loki will honor her desire to have me remain powerless and mortal."

Honestly, it was like Hel was the only one remotely familiar with Joseph Campbell's work. She was pretty sure her dad was just dicking Thor around, too. She'd had her suspicions yesterday, but there was something about her foggy memories of her dream vision and her frantic trip to Jötunheim last night that made her certain he was up to something. She wasn't sure what it was, but she could only be glad that she'd done what she could to prepare for it.

"Remember what we talked about in the truck?" Hel asked Thor.

Thor rubbed his bristly chin thoughtfully. "We discussed much. I take it you are referring to our discussion of how my brother was damaged by those who wished him only the best."

"Yeah, that," Hel said. "He's – I don't think he's being straight with you. You said his tricks were a lot crueler since you broke his brain. Maybe this is one of them."

"You should not say such things about Loki," Thor rumbled. "It is true that he has grown cold these past few centuries, but I shall have faith in his integrity until proof is given." He offered Hel a reproachful frown. "I would have thought that you, too, would have more faith in Loki."

"He's my hero, Thor; he'll always be my hero," Hel said. "But that doesn't mean I can't see the obvious."

"Still, greater proof is called for than suspicion," Thor insisted.

"Hey, there are a bunch of ás-holes outside," Clint said, sounding wide awake as he climbed from his nest on the floor. In that same instant, someone rapped sharply on the glass door.

"No," Hel said, taking a look as Thor jumped up from his chair. "It's 'a bunch of æsir', not 'a bunch of ás-holes'. Ás is singular. In this case, we have two ás-holes, an ásynja, and a vanr."

"My bad," Clint deadpanned.

"My friends!" Thor cried, hauling the heavyset one – Volstagg, her father's memories informed her – into an exuberant hug as they ran inside.

"This is good! This is good!" Volstagg said happily. He passed Thor off to the one with the fussy facial hair – Fandral – and turned to the rest of their hung-over party as Selvig whispered to himself, "I don't believe it."

"Oh, excuse me," he said politely. "Lady Sif and the Warriors Three."

Jane smiled giddily. Hel suspected that if she had her equipment, she'd be taking invasive readings and asking all sorts of questions.

"My friends," Thor said, clapping Hogun, the vanr, on the shoulder, "I have never been happier to see anyone. But you should not have come."

The quartet exchanged bemused glances. "We're here to take you home," Fandral told him.

Thor's face fell. "You – you know I can't go home. My father is dead because of me. I must remain in exile."

"Thor," Sif said gently. "Your father still lives."

Hel coughed pointedly, and Thor broke from his stunned silence. "Do not, Darcy, I beg of you," he said, rubbing his hand over his face and sighing loudly. "Do not say that you told me so."

"Apparently I don't need to," Hel said.

Fandral noticed her for the first time and his eyes lit up. "Thor, you rogue, had you mentioned how beauteous the women of Midgard were, we would have joined you in your exile."

"Keep your eyes in your head, my friend; the Lady Darcy is not one of your conquests," Thor warned him. The level of seriousness in his voice took them all aback, even Hel. "I must apologize for my friend. He often engages his mouth without thinking. Darcy, Jane, Erik Selvig, Clint Barton, young Phelan, allow me to introduce my companions. This is –"

"Fandral the Dashing," Hel supplied, and at Thor's curious look, tapped her head. "Dad gave me some memories of people I should know about. He said that Fandral was a good warrior to have at your back –" Fandral puffed out his chest proudly "– But that one day a horde of angry fathers and brothers were going to run him out of Asgard at the end of a spear."

Volstagg laughed heartily. "Your father must know the Warriors Three well! What did he tell you of me?"

"'Volstagg is the life of any party,'" Hel recalled, "'Just pray that you are not the host, for he'll eat your larder bare.'"

Volstagg grinned broadly, and Hel added with more sincerity, "He also said he looks to you for how a father should truly act, because his own is somewhat lacking."

This brought a true smile to his face, and he bowed slightly, looking genuinely touched.

"You are not a mortal," Hogun observed. Hel watched him right back, and the corners of his eyes crinkled in a near-invisible smile. "Ásynja?"

"Partly."

"Vanr?" he guessed, and immediately shook his head. "No. Perhaps one of the Ljósálfar, on one side of your family."

"No, not a light elf, either. Not even a tiny bit," Hel said. She gave him an innocent smile. "Sorry."

"And your father knows us? Who is he?"

"My dad – my dad loved me," Hel said. "He loved me, and my mother, and my brothers. That's good enough, right?"

Hogun's almost invisible smile put in another appearance. "You are quite the mystery, Darcy. What words of wisdom did he have for you regarding me?"

"'Hogun of the Vanir can't use seiðr, but is very sensitive to it,'" Hel said. "Also, at one point Dad had a plan to spread it around that the reason you always wear armor everywhere is because you're ticklish and don't want to be known as Hogun the Giggly, but decided not to go through with it."

Hel would be willing to swear that, for a blink of an eye, an actual smile crossed Hogun's face as Fandral and Volstagg burst into loud laughter and Sif hid her snickers behind her hand.

"And me?" Sif asked, stepping forward. "What of me?"

Hel's breath caught in her throat. Here was her dad's great love, the mother of her youngest brother, and one of Hel's personal heroes since she was old enough to start making sense of the mess of memories floating around in her tiny infant head three hundred and thirty years ago. She was right here, and if Hel wanted, she could reach out and just touch her, or even hug her.

"He said you're sane," Hel said when she realized she'd been staring silently for long enough to be rude. "He said you're brave, and smart, and beautiful, but that above all, you're sane, and therefore a bastion of uncommon good sense, and that you're one of the best warriors he knew, and that Thor didn't deserve you."

An odd look crossed Sif's face, and she shot a quick glance at Thor over Hel's shoulder. His response was silent, and she turned back to Hel with a real smile and laid her hand on her cheek. "You remind me of someone so familiar," she said softly. Her thumb absently stroked Hel's cheekbone just beneath her left eye.

Hel blushed. "I couldn't say why," she said, looking away. "I must have one of those faces."

"That must be it," Sif agreed, taking her hand away just to run her fingers through Hel's hair in an almost motherly fashion. Hel had the distinct feeling that Sif was humoring her with her response.

Thor chuckled right by Hel's ear, and she jumped away. "Dude! When did you get inside my personal space bubble, and how did I not notice?"

"When Sif came up," Clint said. "You were too busy having a fangirl moment to notice."

"If you will permit me, I would like to introduce you to the rest of our company," Thor said, neatly interrupting before Clint could embarrass her further.

"Of course," Sif said graciously.

One by one, Thor waved them all forward. "This is Jane Foster, a great scholar of Midgard. She and her mentor, Erik Selvig, have been studying the Bifröst."

"Nice to meet you," Jane said cheerfully, and Selvig managed a pained wave.

"This is Darcy's boon companion, Clint Barton," Thor said next. "He is one of Midgard's warriors."

Clint nodded fractionally. "Hey."

"This, as you have gathered, is Darcy Lewis, who has adopted Midgard as her home," Thor said. "Though she is but little, she is fierce in battles, both of wit and on the field."

"I dropped Thor on his ass when he arrived," Hel said. "He was being a dick about my weapon, so…" She trailed off meaningfully.

"A mistake I shall not make a second time," Thor said with mock-solemnity. "And lastly, Darcy's brother, young Phelan Lewis."

They all swung around as one to see Fenrir still sitting at the far end of the table, watching the proceedings carefully.

"Will you not join us, Phelan?" Thor asked.

Fenrir stood slowly, and made his way over to them with obvious trepidation. He came to a stop between and slightly behind Hel and Thor, where he could see everything and still be protected.

"This is your brother, Darcy?" Sif asked, taking in Fenrir's small stature and unusual features with startled eyes.

"He's the best little brother a sister could ask for," Hel said.

Thor beamed. "Indeed, young Phelan is quite creative, and a truly wonderful child." He went soft, then, just like he had with Hel last night, and touched his gray hair gently as Fenrir held still beneath his hand. "I would protect him with my life; like Darcy, I would be proud to number him among my kin."

"High praise indeed," Sif murmured. "I should introduce you to my youngest if ever the opportunity arises. Ullr could do with a friend as quick-witted as he."

Fenrir smiled shyly up at her, and she visibly melted. Hel ruffled his hair fondly. Yep. She and her brother may have both inherited their father's smirk, but his actual smile was bequeathed solely to Fenrir.

"Why so silent, young one?" Volstagg asked.

_"I was hurt,"_ Fenrir signed. _"I can't talk correctly."_

"But who would harm such a delightful child?" Fandral protested.

"Just some ás-hole," Hel said dismissively. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Thor look down guiltily.

Fandral opened his mouth to protest at greater length when Hogun cut him off with a sharp gesture.

"Do you hear that?"

Hel didn't need to hear anything. Her ás-dar was shrieking at her at top volume. She rushed out the door, Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three hot on her heels. There it was, half a mile outside town and a straight shot off Main Street – an open portal to the Bifröst. She swallowed hard.

"Was somebody else coming?"

* * *

_Yep, Thor totally made an unintentional Shakespeare reference. Any recognizable dialogue comes from the movie and not from me._

_Feedback is lovely and always appreciated!_


	6. Uncle Thor Vs Killer Alien Robot

_The Destroyer_. She knew what it was as soon as she saw the flames in the distance. It was what had killed three jötnar only three days ago. And now her own father had sent it to Earth to use against his brother, his love, and their friends.

"If I needed proof that you thoroughly broke his brain with that memory spell, I think it just got delivered," Hel said.

Her observation roused Thor from his stunned staring, and he said, "Darcy, Jane, you have to leave."

"What are you gonna do?" Jane asked.

"I'm staying here."

"The fool's going to fight with us!" Volstagg declared.

"He'd better not be," Hel said.

"No, I'm not," Thor said. "My friends, I'm just a man. I would only get in the way, or worse, get one of you killed. But I can help get these people to safety."

Jane – _stubborn_ genius – drew herself up to her full and still quite diminutive height and said, "Well if you're staying, then so am I."

Thor nodded to her. "Darcy –"

"No," she said. "I'm staying, and I'm fighting."

"I would see you safe," he argued. "Have you ever been in a battle before?"

"I'm a field agent for a shadowy para-military government organization," Hel snapped. "Of course I have."

"Have you been in a battle against something other than a mortal?" he pressed.

"I've had some of the best teachers for the last three centuries," she said, dodging the question. "They all say they haven't ever seen anyone as good with seaxes as me before."

"A fight with the Destroyer should not be your proving ground!"

"You need time to evacuate the civilians. We can give you that time. You're wasting it standing around arguing with me," she said.

He groaned and grabbed her in a tight hug, and she squeaked in surprise, arms stiff at her sides. "Do not die on me, Hel," he whispered. "Not after I've only just begun to know you."

He let her go and strode away before she could think of what to say, and she stared after him, unsure whether to be pleased she had him so firmly on her side already or to toss her sweater in the nearest bin to get the Thor germs off her. Jane and Selvig followed close behind.

Clint looked at her. "Where do you want me?"

She pointed to Thor and the scientists dogging his heels. "Keep them safe."

"You got it."

"Little brother, I want you to run as hard and as fast as you can back to the apartment," Hel told Fenrir. "Take the back paths once you're there, and don't stop until you're in our _other_ home." _'Until you're safe in Helheim,'_ she didn't say, but she knew he understood her meaning.

Fenrir took off like a shot.

"Shall we?" Fandral asked Sif and Darcy.

Hel dismissed the illusion on her seaxes and pulled them from their sheaths. They were a matched set, both of them almost a full foot of gorgeous, single-edged, pattern welded steel, with black leather grips and heavy pommels. She adjusted her grip and grinned. "Let's do this."

"Fear not, comrades," Volstagg called out. "If we die today, then we feast tonight in Valhalla."

"If we die today, my ass is headed straight for Helheim," Hel retorted. "Odin doesn't let part-jötnar into the 'valorous dead' club. Not even his grandkids."

Sif didn't react except to smile a little, apparently not surprised in the least. Hogun, ever the stoic professional, took half a second to make sense of what she said, adjusted his worldview accordingly, and moved on without comment. Volstagg glanced down the street after Fenrir, sighed, and said, "Would that life were simple, and all monsters were truly monsters."

Hel could see why her dad liked Volstagg.

"It's a pleasure to fight at your side, Hel Lokadóttir," Fandral said after looking past Hel at something and blanching.

Hel followed his gaze, and all she could see was Sif, who was already walking away. '_Coolest sort-of stepmom ever._' She just barely heard him berating himself under his breath as he jogged toward the Destroyer. "You fool, you made eyes at Loki's daughter? You're lucky Thor didn't feed you your own spleen."

Hel fell into step at Sif's side, and as they drew closer to the thing laying waste to the tiny town, she called upon her magic and dismissed her normal clothes, swapping them for the armor Laufey had given her upon the signing of the treaty linking their kingdoms. A fine mail shirt and long-sleeved black tunic replaced her t-shirt and sweater; her skirt and sneakers faded into supple black leather breeches and heavy leather boots. She made a wordless request to the shadows around her, and they came rushing to her side, playing around her feet and flowing over her back like a protective cloak.

"Hel, with me," Sif ordered. "Boys, keep it distracted."

"What can you do with your seiðr?" she asked as they slipped around the side. She boosted herself up to the roof of the nearest store and extended her glaive down to Hel to pull her up. They ran across the rooftops, keeping pace with the men below.

"I hate to point out the obvious, but it's the Destroyer," Hel said. "I don't think I can do anything from a distance. If you give me a chance to get in close, I know a galdr I can use that might slow it down."

Sif nodded. "Don't get killed."

"It's not on my to-do list," Hel assured her. She looked down at Volstagg's cry of "For Asgard!" to see him soar through the air, double-headed axe at the ready, and winced when he went soaring right back into the hood of a car at the Destroyer's crushing backhand.

"Wait for it," Sif whispered as the Destroyer drew closer. It came to a stop right above Volstagg's prone body. "Now!"

She flung herself, glaive-point first, from the rooftop, impaling it right through what would have been its throat.

Hel was a heartbeat behind her, and the moment it looked like she'd be able to get near it, she wrapped her seaxes in shadows and chanted.

_"Heed me, death-dealer!  
__You are made of fire and steel.  
__Out of iron came steel,  
__Out of earth came iron.  
__Rust and crumble!  
__Break and fall!  
__Return to the earth.  
__Destroy no more."_

She shoved each seax in deep into the thin gaps in its metal body and tore with every ounce of strength she had. There was no way her blades would ordinarily stand up to the armor of the Destroyer, but her shadows were a different matter, and they came free two metal ribs down, battered and dinged and still swathed in darkness, leaving gouges in their wake.

She and Sif smirked at each other. That was almost too easy.

The Destroyer rumbled to life beneath Sif's feet. Its hands rotated. Its feet and ankles and calves and knees rotated. Its arms and torso turned. Its _head_ turned. The visor opened, and Sif threw herself to the ground with no time to spare as a jet of fire shot right into the space she'd been occupying.

"Fall back!" Sif barked, scrambling to her feet.

It was an unnecessary order. Hogun and Fandral were already racing off. Volstagg hobbled along between them with his arms slung over their shoulders. Sif took off after them, unarmed, her glaive lying on the street at its feet.

_"Never lose your weapon."_ All of Hel's teachers on Jötunheim and in Helheim had drilled that into her from the moment she first started training. Without her weapon, Sif was defenseless. She considered the timing – it was still rumbling back to life, not quite moving as fast as it had been originally, so she might just have time to get Sif's weapon and get out of the danger zone if she was fast enough. She sheathed her right dagger, darted in to grab Sif's glaive, and had just started running when something – something huge and enormously strong and stiflingly hot – grabbed her left arm and yanked hard.

What happened next, Hel would later only recall as a series of impressions.

Searing heat, burning through leather, through skin, and deep into muscle. Immense pressure, enough to crack bones and tear tendons. Weightlessness, as she was pulled from her feet and flung by her arm at least twenty yards.

The hood of a car broke her fall, and her skull slammed painfully against the windshield. She breathed in carefully, and the smell of charcoal and pork and beef, thick and nauseating and almost sweet, crept up her nostrils and into her lungs.

She rolled her head to the side to meet Sif's horrified gaze, and offered her the glaive, still clutched in her fist. "Got it for you," she mumbled, and finished rolling off the car and onto the sidewalk.

Strong arms grabbed her around her waist and dragged her inside the nearest building.

"Are you well?" Hogun demanded in a whisper, his dark eyes intent on her left arm.

Hel looked at it, too, and blanched. It was a blackened mess from her shoulder to her fingers. Her flesh had been burned completely off, nearly to the bone in places. "Oh, gross," she said faintly. She swallowed back the breakfast threatening to revolt at the sight and closed her eyes, taking shallow breaths in a futile attempt to avoid smelling her own charred skin.

"I'll be fine," she lied. "Just keep a look out and let me try to work seiðr on it before the shock wears off."

He patted her undamaged shoulder and moved back to give her room.

She sank deep within herself, calling all the shadows in the room to leave their corners and crannies and join her in her hiding place. She felt them come, always so eager to please, and so happy to be wanted. The one from the doorway slid over her ruined arm and sank into it. It whispered what she needed to know to her in a series of pictures that flashed behind her eyes: _Dislocated shoulder and elbow. Broken humerus. Crushed radius and ulna. Torn rotator cuff. The carpal bones in her wrist were sliding around unpleasantly. The ligaments holding everything in place had snapped like old rubber bands. She had third and even fourth degree burns from her shoulder all the way to her fingertips._

_'A burn this bad, at least it doesn't hurt,'_ she thought distantly, too deep in her magic to react emotionally. _'All the nerve endings are dead.'_

It was time to prove that she was her father's daughter. Her father had done things with seiðr that had never been done before. Maybe, just maybe, she could do the same. She wasn't going to try to fool herself into thinking she could heal herself – she was the goddess of the _dead_, not her aunt Iðunn. But if light and heat had done all of this damage, then it was possible that cold and darkness could fix some of it.

She took a slow, deep breath, and exhaled into her magic.

_Ice_. It had to be strong, the strongest of ice. Ice that never melted. Colder than Ífingr, colder than Jötunheim, colder even than the Élivágar, the original rivers that flowed through Ginnungagap in the beginning of time. She asked. Her ice responded. It started as crystals where her bones had broken, tiny, not-quite-microscopic things that prickled as they fused and grew and fused and grew, welding the breaks together stronger than any steel forged. She felt her forearm shift in her lap as her radius and ulna abruptly straightened. The ice flattened and spread, forming a paper-thin layer that wrapped around each and every bone like armor, from the top of the humerus to the tips of the distal phalanges. Nothing would break through that. She silently thanked the ice and released it, and reached for the next element.

_Shadows_. They flocked to her, and one after another, she felt them take on a new form and a new purpose, this one stitching together torn and snapped tendons and ligaments, these ones integrating with burned and wizened muscles, all of them learning and reshaping old pathways for nerves and blood vessels. The last shadow draped itself over her arm from fingers to shoulder, and like the first, it sank in, but it only went far enough to bond with the others as skin before it, too, became one with her arm.

Hel opened her eyes. Her arms were identical. Nearly. If one overlooked the fact that her left arm was a ghostly, somewhat translucent black, and if she squinted at it she could see her bones. She forced aside the revulsion that welled up within her at its hideous appearance. Unwanted and ugly as it was, it was also made of magic, and if she rejected what her shadows and her ice had done for her, the entire working would probably unravel completely and she'd be worse off than before.

_'I still smell myself burning.'_

She stretched it and winced. Okay, she had fully functional nerve endings again, and they were more than happy to remind her that her shoulder was still dislocated.

"Could you shove my shoulder back in?" she asked Hogun.

He drew back from where he'd been keeping watch out the window and did a double-take at the sight of her arm. "Yes," he said after a second of staring.

His hesitance was obvious, and she placed his hands where they should be with her right hand. "It's totally touchable. Just do it."

Hogun nodded shortly, and braced her arm and shoulder carefully before giving a short, hard shove to pop the joint back into place. Hel groaned deep in her throat and sagged in relief as the pain abruptly lessened.

Hel pulled away and moved to the window. "What's happening out there?"

"The Destroyer is fulfilling its purpose," Hogun murmured, joining her. "It is destroying us." He beckoned Hel to follow him, and they crossed the room on silent feet, exiting out the side door onto a cross street that hadn't been damaged yet.

Fandral and Volstagg were outside, Volstagg leaning on Fandral for support and Fandral holding up admirably under the weight.

"Your father has quite the temper, young Hel," Fandral said breathlessly.

"And somehow, he's convinced this is for the good of Asgard," she said, thinking of Odin's galdr.

Thor ran up to them, Volstagg's discarded and impressively battered shield on his arm. "You must return to Asgard!" he said. "You have to stop Loki. Hel, will you –" He broke off abruptly and stared at her arm with an expression of pure devastation. "Hel?"

"It doesn't hurt," she said, forcing a smile for him. "Not anymore."

"Oh, Hel," he said sadly, before returning to the matter at hand. "Will you go with them?"

"I don't think there's anyone else who can un-fuck Dad's brain who'd be willing to," Hel said. "I have to go."

"Good. You three," he said, "Keep her safe."

"We will," Hogun said.

"What about you?" Fandral asked.

Thor's smile didn't inspire confidence. "Don't worry, my friends. I have a plan."

"But!" Hel protested.

Hogun wrapped his arm around her waist and led her after Fandral and Volstagg, who were already hobbling away. "The sooner we stop your father, the sooner we see an end to this insanity," he said, and she came with him without further fuss, casting glances over her shoulder as they went.

And what she saw, in little bursts as they reached Jane, Selvig, and Clint, and gathered them up in their retreat, made absolutely no sense.

Jane – genius – apparently agreed. "Wait!" she called out. The entire company obligingly halted.

"What's he doing?" she wondered aloud.

Thor stepped out into the open, no armor, no shield, no weapon, and no godly powers to protect him.

"He's being an idiot," Hel summed up through the tightness in her throat. It didn't make sense. Why did seeing Thor act like a moron make her stomach tie itself into knots?

Whatever he was thinking, she hoped it worked. Thor was supposed to be closest to her father out of all the brothers, and he had the luck of three men, so if anyone could _talk_ him into a nonviolent resolution, it would be him. On the other hand, Bragi and Loki were the eloquent ones, not Thor, and they could all out-stubborn a mule.

If her father still knew her, then she could be there in Thor's stead to talk him down.

Clint took over from Hogun before the thought was even fully formed in her head. "Whatever you're thinking," he whispered in her ear, "Don't. Get mad at me later. My job today means I make sure you live to see tomorrow."

Hel was going to have to consider the ramifications of accepting Oaths from people she considered friends in the future. Clint could be terribly overprotective. She didn't bother to fight to free herself, merely flicked a hand at the air to waft Thor's words from his lips to their ears on a gentle breeze.

"Brother, the ways in which I've wronged you, the ways in which Father has wronged you, are numerous, and for that I'm truly sorry. If I live a thousand lifetimes, I fear I shall never be able to forgive myself for the part I have played in what was done to you and to those you once loved." His voice was quiet, but no less passionate for its uncharacteristic lack of volume. "But this isn't you, brother. These people are innocent mortals, and they have done you no ill turn. Taking their lives will gain you nothing but heartache when you come back to yourself."

He glanced over his shoulder and back to the Destroyer. "I know how powerful the galdrs on you are even if you don't, but eventually you'll remember, and if you continue – if you kill her – you will never be able to forgive yourself, either. So if you must take a life today, take mine. I can't let you take Hel's."

Even with the dread crawling up her spine at his bold invitation of death, his measured, even words touched a raw and ragged part of Hel that had been hurting for almost as long as she'd been alive. She was still angry; she might always be angry with him. But he stood between her and the Destroyer, unarmed, and offered up his life, not for Sif, not for the Warriors Three, not for Jane, but for her, his half-jötunn niece.

If he lived through this, she'd hug him. Positive reinforcement was a proven learning technique. And he was going to live through this, because that's what he did. He was the hero, and the hero lived.

The dread remained as the fiery face shut down and the Destroyer slowly turned away. Hel had always known to listen to that dread. It had served her well over the years.

Thor's shoulders slumped in relief, and Hel's ás-dar _screamed_ at her a split second before it happened, far too late to do anything to stop it.

"_NO_!"

She tore herself from Clint's arms as the Destroyer swung an arm at Thor in a casual backhand, connecting with a sickening crunch and sending him flying, limp as a ragdoll, through the air. She raced across the desolated street to where he'd fallen and dropped to her knees beside his head.

"No," she said again, softer. She reached out and touched one of the raw areas on his face. "No, _please_ no, Uncle."

His hand twitched in her direction, and he mustered a pained smile at the title. "I would shout it…to the heavens," he breathed.

"Damn it!" she cried, dragging the back of her hand across her eyes. Why was she crying? She couldn't be crying over her idiot uncle. "You aren't allowed to die, you dumbass. I haven't told you I forgive you yet."

His words came in uneven, painful exhalations. "I…kept you…safe. That's…all…I need."

With a soft sigh, his eyes closed, and he failed to breathe in again.

Hel folded in on herself, burying her face in her hands in disbelief. How was this right? Her stupid, loud, violent uncle, the one who always drank the most and fought the hardest and laughed the loudest, was just – gone. Like that. Three centuries and change of fear and anger and rage, and one smack of the Destroyer's arm killed the second-biggest nightmare she and her brothers dreamed about. And for some horrible reason, it hurt so much to lose him.

It shouldn't.

He was dead, he'd _failed_, and she still smelled like she was burning.

A gentle hand rested on her back, right between her shoulder blades. She barely felt it through her mail shirt, but the owner of the hand knelt beside her and rubbed her back lightly, letting her mourn her loss in silence. Jane. Of course it was Jane. She'd thought she'd been followed over. Gratitude pierced her through, bringing on a fresh round of tears. Jane had probably wanted to say goodbye, too. Hel had no words for how grateful she was to have had Thor's last moments to herself.

The back of her neck prickled. _No._ She wasn't ready to deal with whatever her seiðr-addled father was going to throw at them next.

The gentle rubbing turned to tugging at her shirt. "Dar-_Hel_…"

"Stop."

"We need to move."

"You need to stop," she mumbled. Why was the wind being weird? What was that noise? And why did it sound like it was getting closer, really fast?

"_Darcy_!"

Jane's final, desperate yank hauled Hel out of the way just in time for Mjölnir to whiz straight over where her head had been and smack into Thor's palm with a meaty thud. She stared through watery eyes in disbelief as, against all logic, his fingers wrapped around the handle. His eyes opened again and he stared up at the sky blankly as lightning arced down to strike his hammer, his borrowed clothes fading away as armor fit for the crown prince of Asgard raced up his body.

"Oh. My. God," Jane said faintly from where she was hovering somewhere behind Hel.

And Hel, covered in dust and sprawled across the street on her butt in a most undignified manner, laughed hysterically through her tears. _'Joseph Campbell, eat your heart out.'_

Jane and Clint pulled her to her feet and brought her back, on wobbly legs, to the others. A part of her wanted to protest, but a larger part of her recognized the wisdom in retreat. The Destroyer had turned its attention back to Thor, and the last time she'd gone up against it, although she'd done it damage, she'd definitely come off the worse in the encounter.

It was over in a bare minute. They watched, all of them trembling with the heady combination of adrenaline and relief, as Thor took to the sky, sucking up debris and cars and even the Destroyer in his wake. A slim hand with chewed-off fingernails took her right hand – Jane. Another hand, broad and square and rough with calluses, took her left with no hesitation – Clint. Bracketed between them, she held her breath as flashes of fire and lightning flickered through the thick funnel of clouds. Then, with a sensation not unlike pressure equalizing abruptly in her ears, the fire and lightning collided and exploded outward, and the Destroyer fell lifelessly – harmlessly – to Earth.

Thor's landing was much more elegant. He strode back to them, resplendent in scarlet and silver, no trace of injury to be seen. "It's done," he said, rather unnecessarily in Hel's opinion, as he came to a stop in front of her.

"You _moron_!"

Jane and Clint dropped her hands, and she flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around her gigantic idiot of an uncle's neck in a tight hug. He caught her as soon as her feet left the ground.

"Don't you ever, _ever_, do something that stupidly suicidal again," she said fiercely.

"I can make you no promises," Thor said, and set her gently down. "I behaved with dishonor toward my kin. To act as your champion, yours and Fenrir's, and to guard you from harm, is the least I can do."

Hel reached up and cuffed him upside the head with her flesh and blood hand. "Moron," she said again. "You invited my dad to commit fratricide."

Thor's voice was grave as he ran his hand down her messy hair. "Better he should try to kill me and fail than try to kill his only daughter and possibly succeed."

"What do you mean, try?" Fandral exclaimed. "You were dead!"

"I was not," Thor contradicted him. "I was very nearly dead, but I was not dead."

"Thor, we saw you," Sif said. "You were truly dead."

"No," Thor said again. "I was not. Hel, you rule one of the kingdoms of the dead. Tell us truly; had my spirit departed?"

That was splitting hairs and all immortals present knew it. Spirits, as a general rule, didn't instantly vacate the body at the time of death. It was why people could be clinically dead and then brought back to life with modern medicine here on Earth, and with seiðr on Jötunheim and probably Asgard if they were revived within a couple minutes of the moment of death. But when they did, they lingered until they felt a pull toward one realm of the dead or another. Thor's spirit hadn't budged from his body, but he'd been absolutely, unequivocally dead.

"No," Hel said, meeting his eyes steadily. "Your spirit stayed put. It was a real Miracle Max moment. You were only mostly dead."

"To disagree with that," Thor said, "Is to call me a liar and my brother a kinslayer. So I say again, I did not die. Am I understood?"

The Warriors Three and Sif exchanged looks, and slowly, they all nodded in agreement, with varying degrees of reluctance. The truth didn't matter. What mattered was that no one present would accuse Loki of níðingsverk.

By the time this was all over, her dad might not have much of a reputation left, but she and Thor would protect what little of it remained.

"It's time we left for the Bifröst," Thor said. "I would have words with my brother."

"Save them for after I've undone the mess Freyja and my grandparents did to his head," Hel advised. Her stomach clenched, though whether it was from nerves or anticipation was beyond her ability to tell at the moment.

"Excuse me!" Coulson called out as he, Sitwell, and the agent Hel had scared the day before walked over.

"Hey, Phil," Hel interrupted. "We were just about to go finish the fight on another planet. Be back soon. You can debrief Clint."

"Hey!" Clint objected.

Coulson cast a steady gaze around at the ruined street and storefronts, the smoking wreck of the Destroyer, the Warriors Three and Sif, and finally to Hel. Only the slightest tightening around his eyes gave away that the sight of her arm distressed him. "Fine," he said. "But you're doing the paperwork for this debacle when you get back."

She pulled a face but didn't argue. Better her than Clint.

"Jane, Agent Coulson's going to return your stuff," Hel said. "Because for an employee at a shady government agency, he's a very honorable man, and he told me you'd get them back, so that means you're going to get them back. Right, Phil?"

"Right," Phil agreed. He gave Jane his most calculatedly inoffensive smile, and Jane frowned back, unimpressed.

"If my niece says you are honorable, Son of Coul, then I shall take her at her word, and you can count me as your ally in the protection of Midgard," Thor declared.

Coulson's smile developed a somewhat strained quality at his new name. "We're always glad for the help."

"I'll drive you to the Bifröst site," Clint announced, jingling a set of keys that Hel knew didn't belong to him. Agent Scared-of-Hel opened his mouth to protest, and she and Clint both glared him into submission. "You're good here, right Son of Coul?"

"You had better give me all the details, Barton," Coulson said, and waved them off. "Go. Don't get this one blown up."

Thor inclined his head in acknowledgement of the request, and turned away to face their little duo of mortal scientists. "Jane Foster, Erik Selvig," he said regally, bowing slightly in their direction, "It has been an honor and a privilege. I thank you."

Selvig bowed back awkwardly.

Jane took a few hesitant steps forward. "Will you come back?" she asked.

"I shall do my best," Thor said.

For a brief, charged moment, Hel was positive Jane was going to kiss him. Then, oddly, the moment passed and she stepped back. "Take care of Darcy – of Hel," she amended. "And don't get killed."

"That I can promise you," Thor said.

It didn't seem to matter that he'd quite literally just been killed not fifteen minutes ago. Hel, Norns help her, absolutely believed he'd keep his word or die trying – again.

* * *

_Recognizable dialogue is from the movie, either used straight or adapted to fit the AU._

_As always, feedback is appreciated._


	7. Every Inch Her Father's Daughter

The seven of them piled into the sedan, Volstagg getting the passenger seat by virtue of his size. Clint didn't even wait until the rest of them had sorted out the seating arrangements in the back, just gunning it as soon as all the doors were closed. After the initial intensely uncomfortable moment of acceleration without a seatbelt, she felt herself hauled back onto someone's lap by a muscular, armored arm.

"Are you alright?" Thor asked.

"I'm so far from alright we're not even on the same planet," Hel said, leaning against the door and the warm glass window. "When this is over? I'll figure out if I'm alright then. And for the record, this is why nobody lets Clint drive out in the field unless we're trying to lose a tail."

She looked down the row of seats. On the other side, Sif was perched on Fandral's knees, a grim expression on her face, and Fandral was looking everywhere but at her as he muttered prayers for deliverance under his breath. Between Fandral and Thor, Hogun sat squished and barely breathing. Thor seemed oblivious to it all, but judging by the careful positioning of his hands and the tension in his thighs, Hel was certain he was as uncomfortable with the forced closeness as she was. She wondered if the reason Hogun was barely breathing was the same reason as her own.

"What can I do?" Thor asked.

"Distract me."

"Very well. Perhaps you could tell me what my brother told you of me. Surely if Loki used his magic to give you memories of his family and friends, he said something about me," Thor said.

"He did," Hel said.

"Well?" Thor asked when she didn't elaborate.

"I'll tell you what he said if you tell me when you realized I was his daughter," Hel bargained.

Thor smiled. "You have a deal, though as I asked first, it's only right that you should tell me first."

"How mature of you," Hel said, and Thor's smile grew.

"Fine. 'This is your uncle, Thor Odinson,'" Hel began, imitating her dad's accent. "'He's stout-hearted and thick-skulled. But for all Thor's dimness, he's easy enough to love.'"

If Thor's smile was a bit wet around the eyes, no one was tactless enough to point it out. "You wish to know how I began to suspect?"

"I know I gave myself away when I drove you back from the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility," Hel admitted. "You mean you figured me out earlier?"

Thor shook his head. "Far earlier than that. That was confirmation. I suspected that you were not of this realm the moment you first spoke to me. It was when we next encountered one another in Jane's lab that your identity as my brother's daughter began to seem a possibility."

"Ouch," Clint commented from the front. "I think someone needs remedial undercover lessons."

"I was _emotionally compromised_," Hel hissed at him. "Shut up."

"You see," Thor continued, "It was entirely possible that you were merely familiar with the Viking myths, but that wouldn't explain your hostility, nor that you seemed to know who I was without an introduction. So I thought that perhaps you were a descendent of someone I'd faced in battle."

"I'm with you so far," Hel said.

"Then there were all of your insults. Loki would never let an opportunity to insult me pass him by. But in truth, it was your slap that led me to believe you might be more than that." He smiled somewhat ruefully. "When she lived, Angrboða struck me once for the insult I gave her father's people. I suppose it should have come as no surprise that her daughter would follow in her footsteps. Your mother was a fierce, proud woman, just as you are."

Hel could only stare out the window in silence. The mother he spoke of wasn't the mother she knew. The mother _she _knew had spent the first decade of her afterlife raging and weeping by turns, taking long walks outside the walls of Éljúðnir alone only to come rushing back, frantic with worry that her children had been taken. One moment she'd swear vengeance, and in the next she'd beg Hel to never let the Æsir get their hands on Fenrir again. Only after one of her walks did those ten long years of terror and anger finally end, but her in-laws' betrayal had damaged her in ways that couldn't be fixed. The fierce, proud woman in her father's memories was a shadow of her former self, withdrawn and quiet, mistrusting everyone but her sons and daughter.

She could have had that mother. She could have had her mother teach her ice magic and her father teach her illusions. She could have had Sif as her stepmother, a family with magic and weapons and love, all her siblings under one roof, no end of uncles and cousins and grandparents. She could have been a child and not an adult. Instead –

"My mother," she breathed, "Was murdered."

"Hel," Thor started, and trailed off.

"Angrboða was – my apologies – executed for treason, was she not?" Fandral ventured to ask. "For the use of magic against a prince of Asgard?"

Hel didn't answer.

"She did use magic against my brother," Thor said. "She did, didn't she?" When she still didn't speak, his words took on a pleading tone. "Hel, tell me that at least this much is true."

Hel shook her head.

"Please. Please tell me that my father didn't have an innocent woman _killed_ –"

Hel sighed. "Let it go."

"_Let it go_?"

"There's nothing you can do about it," Hel said. "All you can do is stop Dad and give me a chance to fix his mind."

The thought of actually going to Asgard sent a shiver of apprehension up her spine, and her grimace didn't go unnoticed by the other occupants of the car.

"You could stay behind," Sif offered. "No one would fault you for not wishing to set foot in Asgard."

"If I could stay, I would," Hel said. "I don't think anyone else has the skill to undo what was done to Dad, except maybe Dad himself, and he can't for obvious reasons. Just don't let anyone try to throw me off the Bifröst like Jör, okay?"

"If anyone tries, they will answer to me," Sif said, her voice hard, and in the seat ahead of her, Volstagg nodded his agreement.

Hel gave them both a small smile. "Thanks."

Clint stopped the car as abruptly as he'd taken off, and they all crashed forward into the seats ahead of them.

"_Clint_!"

"Ladies and gentlemen, we've reached our final destination," he announced. "Please make sure your tray tables are stowed and your seats are in their upright and locked positions. Thank you for choosing Viking Air, and have a safe and pleasant journey."

Hel tumbled out of the car's oppressive atmosphere and off Thor's lap with a moan of relief. "Never again!"

"You always say that," Clint observed as he got out of the driver's seat. "And yet, you always end up in the car with me again somehow."

"You don't have to practice evasive maneuvers every time you get behind the wheel."

"It keeps me fresh." He tugged her into a hug before she could shoot back, and gave her a brotherly kiss on the forehead before letting her go. "Come back soon, okay? I don't want to get saddled with the paperwork."

"Like I'd inflict your idea of paperwork on poor Phil," Hel said.

"I shall return her to you safe and sound," Thor promised.

Clint sketched a lazy salute and stepped back. "I'm holding you to that."

"Let's not delay any longer," Sif said, eyeing Hel and Thor from where she stood with the Warriors Three inside the circle.

Hel had been wondering where the sense of imminent doom had disappeared to for the past minute. She and Thor hurried to join them, and after touching her one remaining seax to reassure herself that it was still there, she looked up at Thor and smirked. "Go on. You know he's gonna answer this time."

He grinned back down at her and raised his voice. "Heimdall! Open the Bifröst!"

The connection was instantaneous, far faster, far brighter, and far more uncomfortable than the back paths Hel often traveled. Before she even had a chance to really notice the dizzying, vertigo-inducing feeling of being pulled through space from near the center of Yggdrasil to the very top, they were there, stumbling slightly before landing on their feet.

The air was saturated with the magic of Asgard, and it pressed down on her overdeveloped early warning system– her "ás-dar" – so heavily her knees almost buckled at the need to run and clenched her fists and screwed up her courage. Fear wasn't an option.

A familiar face in the center of the room caught her eye, and instantly, she was too worried to be terrified.

"What the fuck are you doing out of bed?" Hel demanded of Aurvandil.

"Breaking the Gatekeeper out of an ice prison, keeping him alive, watching Thjazi's back while he pretends to be Her Majesty and a company of guards…" Aurvandil listed. He had Heimdall's arm slung around his shoulders, and they were both wobbling in place.

"You know this man?" Thor asked Hel.

"Oh, right, the shape-shifting," Hel said. "I didn't even notice. Uncle Thor, meet my favorite teacher, Aurvandil. Aurvandil, meet my uncle, Thor."

Fandral eyed Aurvandil's pale skin and dark, silver-flecked hair and beard. "Your teacher?"

"I believe they call him Aurvandil the Valiant on Jötunheim," Heimdall interjected.

Fandral's eyes widened to almost comedic proportions. "You're a _jötunn_?"

"Shape-shifting's kind of our thing," Hel said. "Can we do this later? We need to go, now."

"Help them get to a healing room," Thor ordered the Warriors Three and Sif. "Hel, hold on tight to me and don't let go."

Thor flew Hel over the Rainbow Bridge, past the courtyard, and deep into the palace before they touched down. All of it looked achingly, beautifully familiar in a faint way, her father's memories tinged with his sadness at the certainty that she'd never be able to see it herself and with her own potent fear that coming here would likely be the last thing she'd ever do.

"Down here," Thor said quietly. They rounded a corner and made it only a few feet down the hall before Thor pulled up short, bringing his hammer to bear.

"He's just killed my illusion of Her Majesty, the King," Thjazi whispered, walking up to them on silent feet. "Be careful, young Hel. He doesn't seem to think he has anything left to lose. A man with nothing to lose is the most dangerous sort of man of all." He nodded curtly at Thor, and Jötunheim's foremost seiðmaðr faded from ten feet tall and robin's egg blue to tall only by Asgard's standards, pale, and armored like one of Odin's countless einherjar.

"Can you find the healing rooms?" Thor asked, low-voiced. Thjazi nodded. "Good. We shall meet you there afterward. Go, and stay safe."

Thjazi slipped silently past them. Thor looked after him, back to Hel, and opened his mouth to say something before seeming to think better of it. "Come. We must hurry."

Urgency lent speed to their footsteps, and by the time they reached the open door to Odin's bedchamber at the end of the hall they were running. They burst over the threshold, weapons at the ready, and Hel –

Hel fell back into the sturdy support of Thor's encircling arm, swaying in shock. She'd thought she was prepared to finally see her dad in person.

She wasn't. Not like this.

He was there, in his black and gold armor and ridiculous helmet, a floor-length green cape hanging from his shoulders. He was just as he'd looked in her memories, only he was a few hundred years older, no longer hovering on the outer edges of adolescence. He was thin – maybe too thin – and yet he was still, in Hel's very biased opinion, the handsomest man she'd ever seen. He was looking at her and Thor with wary, angry eyes that held no recognition of her whatsoever. He didn't know her at all. This wasn't her dad. This was a hollowed out shell of her dad, with everything that made him who he was scooped out.

"Loki!" Thor called out.

Frigga hastened from Loki's side and rushed up the stairs to hug Thor. He returned it absently with his free arm, staring hard at Loki over Frigga's shoulder. "Thor! I knew you'd return to us." She pulled away and looked curiously at Hel. "Who is this, my son?"

"Hel," Hel said as politely as she could manage. That wasn't saying much, but she didn't think she should be rude to her grandmother, no matter how badly she'd screwed up. "Queen of Helheim and Niflheim."

Frigga gasped softly, covering her mouth with her hand.

Loki, who had been watching the byplay with narrowed eyes, interjected himself into the conversation. "I know not why you have brought such august company to Asgard, brother, though I am, of course, honored by the presence of the queen of the inglorious dead."

"You set the Destroyer on us," Thor said with forced calm. "You set the Destroyer on me, on our friends, on _Hel_." By the time he reached Odin's bed, his grip on his temper had slipped and he was shouting. "What if you'd killed us? What if you'd killed her? You – Look at her, brother! _You_ _hurt her!_"

Hel shook her head as all eyes snapped to her and her arm. "No. No, it was my fault."

"That thing nearly killed you!" Thor argued.

"It was my fault," Hel said again. "I was too slow."

Loki raised his eyebrows at her, perhaps wondering why she would defend him. "My sympathies for your injury, Queen Hel. Surely you know I had nothing to do with it." Hel recognized his innocent tone as the same one she used when she was trying to pull a fast one on the World Security Council.

"You had everything to do with it!" Thor shouted.

"It must have been enforcing Father's last command," Loki said, turning his attention back to Thor.

Hel took advantage of Loki's distraction to give her shadowy hand a subtle flick of fingers. A trickle of nearly invisible magic flew from her fingertips, and it crept up the back of Loki's cape, under his helmet, and slowly, and ever so gently, started to sink into his temple.

"_Your_ command, Loki," Thor said. "These denials are pointless."

"I would never do such a thing to my own brother," Loki protested.

Thor glowered at him. "You're a talented liar, brother, always have been."

Loki shifted his grip on Odin's spear Gungnir and smiled slightly at Thor. "It's good to have you back. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go destroy Jötunheim." And before Hel could even think to warn Thor, her dad blasted him straight out one of the walls of the tower.

"Mother," Loki said politely. "Queen Hel." He gave them both perfunctory bows and strode past them up the steps and down the hall.

Hel bit her lip and swallowed hard against the tightness in her throat at his polite dismissal. He'd saved her life once. Once, he'd promised to always love her. Now he looked at her and saw a stranger.

A sharp stinging in her lip and a burst of salt on her tongue brought her attention back to the present, and she dabbed at the little wound – so inconsequential, after everything – with her finger. There was no time to dwell. She set aside broken promises and broken hearts in favor of focusing on something she could control instead: the removal of the memory spells on her dad's mind.

"Got it," Hel said in satisfaction as her thread of magic finally reached his mind. She detached the thread from her fingertips and let it settle against her own temple with a casual gesture that Frigga missed entirely. She looked about for a place to sit, and, finding none, took a seat on the stairs, knowing she'd be at it a while, and started to slowly send part of her conscious mind down the link.

"Have a seat," Hel said. "They might be at it a while."

"You don't seem terribly worried that my son has threatened genocide," Frigga said, hovering uncertainly over Hel.

"I'm worried about Dad succeeding in blowing up the planet," Hel said with a casualness she didn't feel in the least. "But he's not going to commit genocide. We evacuated Jötunheim. Nobody's there."

Frigga sank gracefully to the step beside Hel. "How?" she asked, eyes wide.

"Dream vision," Hel said distractedly, still following the continuously stretching link. "I went and warned King Laufey, and we came up with a plan. Mind you, I was still pretty drunk after Uncle Thor drank me under the table, so I'm fuzzy on the details, but I know everyone's on Niflheim now."

"Yes, that makes sense, but I meant, how…." Frigga couldn't seem to ask the question.

"How do I know who my dad is when Granddad Ás – ah, the AllFather banished me when I was an infant?" Hel clarified. "The real answer is long and involves a lot of very complicated seiðr on Dad's part. The short answer is the AllFather had my mom killed outside the field of battle. It's kind of a no-brainer as to whose realm she ended up in."

Her grandmother was quiet at her side for a minute, and Hel thought she was as lost in her thoughts as Hel was in her seiðr. Then she spoke, so quietly Hel almost missed it.

"Do you hate us?"

The question caught her off guard. She caught herself before she could answer honestly and asked in return, "What on earth could possibly make you think that I hate you?"

Frigga flinched. "Your grandfather has had to make hard decisions in order to protect the realm."

"Funny," Hel said. "I thought we were taken out of the genealogical records."

"He is still your grandfather," Frigga said, "And what he did was done for the good of Asgard."

"Thor said the same thing," Hel said. "I'd love to know what the 'good of Asgard' looks like. Besides, you know, my family being destroyed and my baby brother being tortured so you can sleep at night."

"You and your brothers were a danger. We had no choice."

"We were babies, and there's always a choice," Hel shot back. She debated the wisdom of asking, but the part of her that had always held her dad's words as gospel just had to know. "Do _you_ hate _us_?"

"I fear what you will do," Frigga admitted. "Your roles in Ragnarök are terrifying."

"I see what you did there," Hel said. If she weren't such a jumble of nerves and fear and stress and anger at the moment, she might have actually been amused by her grandmother pulling the same dodge.

Finally, her mind reached the end of the link, and she slipped in to get a look at what needed to be undone in her dad's mind. Almost as soon as she was in she recoiled in horror at the snarled knot of galdrs layered atop one another, twisting and twining in tangled ropes of sickly gold magic, only echoes remaining of the poetic curses used to put them in place. "What the _fuck_ did you do to him?" she cried.

"What do you mean?" Frigga asked, startled. "Are you – you're working seiðr."

"On Loki," a new voice said, and they both looked up to see Odin climbing from his golden bed. "Girl, leave it be."

Frigga rose from the stairs and rushed to embrace her husband.

"No way," Hel said, her mind's eye still staring in revulsion at the galdrs binding her dad's thoughts and behavior. "You have no idea what kind of damage you did."

"We brought him back from the edge of grief," Odin said, "And gave him new purpose."

"You broke him," Hel said. "You took him and you twisted him and you – how can you live with yourself?"

"Who do you think you are to question me?" Odin asked, looming over Hel and glaring down at her with his single eye.

Hel glared back up at him, undaunted. "I'm Hel _Lokadóttir_. I'm the granddaughter of King Laufey and her consort Fárbauti by blood and of King Odin and Queen Frigga by shady kidnapping-slash-adoption. I'm the queen of Helheim and of the savage lands of Niflheim. I'm the seiðkona who put a big rusty hole in your toy robot. I'm a grown woman who by all rights should still be a kid. I'm an overprotective big sister with a gigantic wolf for a baby brother. I'm a senior field agent for an elite Midgardian covert agency that I helped found out of paranoia about _you_ showing up. I am every _inch_ my father's daughter, despite your best efforts to the contrary. I'm here to _un-fuck my dad's brain_ and _you aren't going to stop me_."

Odin's glare subsided into an expression that, for the life of her, Hel couldn't read. "I do not take kindly to being challenged in my own home," he said.

"Ask me if I give a crap," she retorted.

He 'hmph-ed' at her in a manner eerily reminiscent of the rare times she'd managed to both piss off and amuse Fury. "You're an impertinent child."

Hel laughed bitterly. "Would you think your decision to throw me away was justified if I acted more like a monster? Sorry, but I don't live down to other people's expectations just to make them feel better about themselves."

Frigga approached her like Hel would approach an unexploded bomb. "If you do this, what will happen? Will he be himself again?"

"Frigga," Odin warned her.

"No!" Frigga said. "I want my son back. This is our doing, husband. He deserves an end to his suffering. Granddaughter, _will he be himself again_?"

"I can't guarantee anything," Hel said, shaking her head. "That's the nature of seiðr. There are no absolutes when magic gets involved, and with how long your galdrs have been on him…. I honestly don't know. But eventually, yeah, Dad will probably be himself again, though if he ever trusts any of you around him while he's sleeping is beyond me."

Frigga glanced at Odin. "Do it," she said.

"Nice to have approval, but I was going to anyway," Hel said.

"Will it be easier to work this seiðr here or closer to where Loki is?" Odin asked.

Hel got to her feet in response, already reaching out with her magic to test the strength of the galdrs. "Let's go."

Odin reached for her, and she threw up her good arm to block his hand, sidestepping him completely. He stopped dead, staring at her with an unreadable look in his eyes.

"I'm not going to hurt you, girl," he said finally. "It will simply be faster if we fly."

"An argument could be made that all you do is hurt me," Hel said.

"Let him take you," Frigga said. "You will be safe with him."

"Swear it," Hel demanded. "Swear it by something I can trust."

"On all my sons' lives, you will be safe with my husband," Frigga said. "Now let him take you, granddaughter."

All her instincts shrieked for her to duck as he reached for her again. Instead, she threw her consciousness headlong down the link connecting her mind to her father's, and was only marginally aware of having her shoulder gripped by a large, strong hand, and of lifting off the ground and being propelled from the room even faster than Thor had flown them there.

She examined the galdrs with a critical eye. She knew this sort of magic. She'd used curses before, and Thjazi, her primary teacher in seiðr, had stressed that she would only be allowed to use them if she could undo the working first. However, she'd never seen magic turned against the mind like this. In theory, she could do it. She was confident she'd be able to. She had to.

_'Please, please, _please_ don't let me make this worse.'_

There were four of them, not three, all snarled together and wrapped tight around his mind. Freyja's failed galdr lingered unpleasantly, an insubstantial tarnished silver thing. _Forget_, it whispered over and over, almost halfheartedly. Frigga's was a gleaming rose-gold that said soothingly, _Forget that they are your children_. Odin's was the worst. Somehow his white-gold galdr had split into two, and they thundered at her dad in imperious voices, _Forget your love!_ and _Your loyalty belongs to Asgard!_

She gave Freyja's failed galdr up as a lost cause for the moment. There was no way she could get remove something so intangible while she was so stressed and scared – a misstep on her part could give it the strength it needed to be complete. Frigga's looked like it might be the easiest. It wasn't barbed like Odin's, for one thing, and it was strictly about memory, not emotion. She touched it tentatively with her magic and felt it slide right off.

_'Crap.'_

If touching Frigga's galdr with her magic directly wasn't going to work, then maybe the indirect approach would. She pushed a tiny shadow down the link, and when it reached her dad's mind, she wrapped it carefully around the galdr like a swaddling cloth before trying again. It was still slippery, but this time her grip held, and she pulled it free from the knot and crushed it into nothingness with no further trouble. The shadow she kept on hand just in case.

Hel was so deep into her work that she didn't even notice how far they'd flown until Odin landed with a jarring thud. Shaken from her concentration, she chose one of his two galdrs at random and looked up to see what had made him stop.

Oh. _No_.

The bridge shuddered alarmingly beneath their feet, and Hel scrambled away, staring with wide eyes as Thor smashed Mjölnir down again and again. Loki leaped for Thor with Gungnir outstretched. Odin sprinted toward them both. Hel wrapped her shadow around Odin's galdr and started the painstaking process of dislodging its hooks from his mind, coating them in shadow one by one until they were slick as glass. And the bridge gave one final shudder before buckling and shattering dramatically, throwing everyone off their feet.

As soon as she could tell up from down, Hel climbed to her feet and raced to the edge where Odin stood. Miraculously, he'd caught Thor by the foot, and he and Loki both had death-grips on Gungnir. Hel hung back, pulling the galdr free as fast as she could, her heart in her throat, as her dad called up to Odin plaintively.

"I could have done it, Father! I could have done it! For you! For all of us!"

The galdr crumbled beneath Hel's magic just as Odin replied quietly, "No, Loki."

His face smoothed over in a mask of false serenity. Panicked, Hel dove back into his mind to see which one of Odin's galdrs remained.

"Loki, _NO_!"

Too late. Far too late. Very deliberately, her father let go of Gungnir's shaft, and let the void take him, dragging Hel's magic along before she could pull the link free.

Someone screamed. And screamed, and screamed, and kept screaming, until strong arms went around Hel's body and pulled her close, shushing her softly as tears dripped down onto the top of her head.

"He's so cold," she sobbed. "He'll never be warm again."

The last thing she was aware of before she succumbed to the encroaching darkness was Thor scooping her off her feet in a bridal carry. Then all was cold, and black, and empty.

* * *

_I have no idea what anyone thought of the last chapter. Awesome, awful, or just meh? How about this one? Feedback is appreciated!_


	8. Nobody Likes A Family Reunion

"You're very bad at this game," Hel heard as she fought her way back to consciousness. "Check and mate."

She heard a clink, presumably a game piece toppling over, and Thor replied to Aurvandil, "Loki and Bragi tried many times to teach me, but I have little patience for games of strategy."

Hel opened her eyes to light and a high, airy ceiling. Apparently sometime in between collapsing on the bridge and waking up, someone had tucked her into a soft bed with fine linen sheets and a comfortable mattress. Given the amount of natural light in the room, and that Aurvandil was present, it seemed unlikely that they were in the dungeons. Maybe Thor was their guard.

Her eyes filled, and she blinked her tears away. In the back of her mind, her dad was still falling, and she was falling with him. She shivered and tugged the blankets up higher. For such a sunny room, it was freezing cold.

Someone sat heavily on the edge of her bed. "We were starting to wonder when you'd wake," Aurvandil said. "It's been a full day and a half."

Hel reluctantly looked up at him. He was still in the guise of an ás, pale and dark haired, and his clear green eyes ached with concern for her.

"He was right there," Hel whispered. "My dad was right there, and he let go. How many times am I going to lose him before we're a family again?"

Aurvandil squeezed her hand in wordless sympathy.

"He will be mourned," Thor said solemnly. "Asgard's loss is greater than can be expressed."

Hel shuddered. "He's not dead."

There was a clatter outside her field of vision, and between one blink and the next, Thor was standing over the bed. His looming, unlike Odin's, felt entirely protective. "My brother lives?"

Hel looked away, addressing her hands instead of Thor. "I wasn't finished getting rid of all the galdrs," she said in a low voice. "There were too many, and they were too well attached. When he fell, we were still connected. I'd feel it if he died."

Thor swore loudly and dropped onto the scant remaining room on her bed. "You said – before you collapsed, you said he was cold."

"So cold," she whispered. "Cold, and alone, and he's still falling, and he's screaming."

Thor shook his head. "Oh, my poor brother."

Aurvandil latched on to another part of her admission. "Too many?" he asked. "How many were there?"

Hel scowled. "Four." Her teacher's hand tightened convulsively around hers, and she winced, both at the strength of his grip and the terrible anger on his face.

"Her Majesty the King will not be pleased to hear her missing son was treated so poorly," he said.

"You can tell her," Hel said. "There's enough shitty news to go around for everyone to take turns delivering some." She tugged her hand free and grabbed hold of both her teacher and uncle's shoulders, using their strength to haul herself into a sitting position. "You're still shape-shifted," she said, turning the subject to something less painful.

Aurvandil's raised eyebrow said he knew exactly what she was doing, but he was kind enough not to comment. "Yes. It would seem that the Æsir are less inclined to reach for the closest weapon at hand when we're not blue and several feet taller."

"What a shock," Hel said dryly.

"Thjazi has been in and out of the healing rooms since you were brought here," he continued. "The half-jötunn gatekeeper, Heimdall, acts as his guard, even if everyone is too polite to call it that. He's getting everything ready for peace talks to begin."

Hel was certain she'd misheard. "I'm sorry, peace talks? It's been less than a week since war was declared. There's no way that Granddad Ás-hole –"

"Hel!" Thor scolded her.

"That the AllFather," she amended, "Would go for peace talks when Jötunheim's practically lost the war already."

"You speak truly," Thor said. "However, Father was impressed that even with war upon our two realms, Jötunheim came to Asgard's aid, and he offered to grant a boon to both your teacher and your seiðmaðr."

"Thjazi asked that we be permitted to sue for peace rather than surrender," Aurvandil said. "I asked that you play host to the talks."

"And he said yes," Hel said. "Really? Of all the things you could possibly have asked for, you thought 'let's make Hel host a family reunion' was a good idea?"

"Vanaheim is too closely allied to Asgard to be impartial. Álfheim and Niðavellir have no desire to get involved, Midgard is unaware of the existence of the other realms, and Muspelheim is too hungry for power to be granted such an honor," Aurvandil explained. "The war may be over, but the Jötnar do not trust the Æsir enough to come here, and Jötunheim is in no condition to host the talks. That leaves –"

"Niflheim and Helheim," Hel finished. "Both of which are under my rule."

"You may mistrust Asgard, but you have yet to turn a single soul away from Helheim," Thor said. "Your political neutrality and your familial ties to both ruling families made it impossible to deny your teacher his request."

"But I'm not politically neutral. I have an alliance with Jötunheim," Hel said. This had to get her off the hook.

"Your uncle and his warrior friends haven't stopped talking about how wonderful you are to anyone who will stop and listen," Aurvandil said. "I would not be surprised if Asgard seeks a similar alliance."

"Fine, but we're doing things my way," Hel said.

"That's exactly what Her Majesty wishes," Aurvandil said.

Hel almost smirked at that. She doubted that anyone would like her plan. "What's the official word on Jötunheim?" she asked. "How bad is it?"

"Uninhabitable," Aurvandil said. "Útgarðr was completely destroyed; not that it took much to do so. Your warning came just in time; we were able to get everyone out and settled on Niflheim without a moment to spare." He looked away, misty-eyed. "This is not how I wished to return to my childhood home."

Thor shifted uncomfortably, but remained silent. Hel appreciated his rare show of good judgment in not speaking up in defense of Odin again. Apparently being faced with someone who'd lived through the Purge of Niflheim was enough to curb his tongue.

"The people of Jötunheim are welcome in my kingdom for as long as they need, or wish, to stay," Hel said.

"On behalf of Jötunheim, I thank Your Majesty," Aurvandil said, equally formal. He cleared his throat and gave her a steady look. "Hogun and the Lady Sif told me of your part in the fight against the Destroyer."

Hel was suddenly acutely aware that the linen shift some helpful healer had changed her into was sleeveless. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Imagine that," Aurvandil said. "My student doesn't wish to discuss a battlefield injury. How very surprising."

"It was my fault. I made a mistake."

"It wasn't your fault," Thor interrupted.

"You did make a mistake, however," Aurvandil said. "Why? Why would you make such a basic error in judgment? You stopped doing that well over a century ago."

"My friend, be gentle with her; she is very young," Thor said. "It's perfectly understandable that a maiden of her age would make errors on the field of battle."

"Not this maiden," Aurvandil said. "Not my student. I'll ask again, Hel. Why?"

"I was too slow," Hel said. She felt like she was turning into a broken record.

"Yes, but why were you too slow?" Aurvandil asked. "Hel?"

"Because Dad sent it, alright?" she snapped. "Because Dad sent it, and he'd never hurt me. He loves us. He _promised_. I just – I let my guard down. I forgot that I didn't matter to him anymore. I won't forget again." She didn't expect she'd be able to with a permanent reminder of that fact attached at the shoulder.

"He still lives, as you yourself said," Aurvandil said. "Hold fast to that hope. We may yet bring your father home."

Thor nodded. "Norns willing, he will return to us."

Hel wasn't sure how they could possibly rescue her dad from falling through the vast nothingness of space, but the optimism was a refreshing change from her own mindset at the moment.

Aurvandil gave her a smile that only looked slightly forced. "Thjazi is in raptures of ecstasy over your arm. Apparently what you did might prove to be useful to other jötnar who were injured in previous battles. Recreating almost an entire limb out of magic alone is no small feat."

"Once you get past the shock, it's quite beautiful, in its own way," Thor added. "I only wish there had been no need for you to take such extreme measures to heal yourself."

Hel dismissed Thor's attempt to make her feel better about it with an inelegant snort. "It's not healing," she said, holding her left arm out for inspection. "Not really. If it was healing, it would be flesh and blood, just like the other one. It's just that if I hadn't done something then, I would probably have lost it entirely."

"Your seiðmaðr Thjazi and our head healer Lady Eir disagree with your assessment," Thor told her. "They say you rebuilt your entire arm, all the way down to the veins and arteries."

"I did what I had to," Hel said. "Can we maybe not talk about my arm, please? I just want to get out of bed."

"As you wish," Thor agreed.

"What is it, Uncle?" Hel sighed at Thor's obvious hesitance to continue speaking. He brightened at her choice of address, and she resolved to use it more often.

"The AllFather has ordered that, as peace talks between Asgard and Jötunheim have not yet begun, I or any of my brothers must serve as escort to you, for Aurvandil has declared that he will not leave your side." Thor shrugged his broad shoulders and smiled slightly. "Let us say that it's an honor guard for a foreign dignitary, nothing more and nothing less."

"We can call it that," Hel agreed. "Budge up, you two. I can't get out of bed while you're sitting on the blankets."

When they were off the bed and she was back on her feet for the first time in, apparently, over thirty-six hours, Thor gestured to a chest in the corner of the room. "You had nothing with you but your armor when we arrived," he said. "Mother made arrangements for garments to be procured that were suited to a woman of your stature."

"Out, both of you," she ordered, shooing them toward the door. "I need privacy to change."

With the door shut firmly behind them, she opened the chest and pulled out the top dress. It was a soft, finely-woven thing, delicate and long-sleeved and the same hazy grayish-blue-green as her eyes. She pulled off the undyed linen shift and tugged the dress on over her head. The hem swished about her bare ankles in a way that made her want to turn in circles just to watch the skirt flare out from her hips, and the bodice hugged her curves in just the right manner, accentuating what it should while still staying modest. She poked her head back in the chest, shivering. There was nothing warm about this sprawling city of gold and silver and steel. There, excellent – a voluminous cloak an even darker green than her father's, with a deep hood. Just looking at it made her heart ache with how close she'd come to having him back.

Given how much she looked like her father and mother, wearing it would probably be like flipping a giant middle finger to every ás and ásynja who kept her and her brothers a secret from Loki, she mused. She swept it onto her shoulders and secured it with a gold cloakpin.

'_Good.'_

Frigga had been kind enough to furnish her with jewelry as well, a heavy gold torc twisted and turned so that an intricate spiral pattern ran along the length, and two gold bracers with inlaid amber. It was much more than she'd wear anywhere outside Niflheim, and she was pleased to see that she was being given the recognition due to a fellow queen, even if she often disdained to act like one. It was – she hoped – a good sign.

There were a pair of dainty slippers near the bottom of the trunk that looked like they'd fall apart if she so much as looked at them wrong, so she left them were she found them. One never knew when there might be a need for some frantic, long-distance running, after all. She retrieved her trusty old boots from the dark corner of the room where they'd been stashed and slid them on, and strapped her single battered seax around her waist in its only marginally less battered sheath, relieved neither been taken while she slept.

She still felt incomplete, and she knew why.

If she were here as Helena Locke, or as Helene Lewis, or Darcy Lewis, or Agent Hel Lokadóttir, or just plain Hel, it wouldn't be a problem. But she was in a semi-hostile court as a visiting monarch, and her head felt just a little too light without a crown to adorn it.

There was nothing she could do about it at the moment, though, so she opened the door and walked out, bare head held high.

Aurvandil swept her a bow as soon as he caught sight of her, and Thor followed suit.

"Hel." Thor swallowed hard. "You look – you look so much like your father."

Satisfaction welled up inside her as he turned his face away and swiped at his eyes roughly.

"I know," she said. "I don't intend to let anyone forget it."

"We all look much alike, we frost giants," Aurvandil said casually to cover for Thor's momentary lapse of composure. "The way we look when we shape-shift into forms similar to those of the Æsir – coloring, hair, eyes, height and girth – those are all heritable traits."

Thor nodded and began to lead the way down the hall. "So frost giants are dark of hair and fair of face, with light eyes?"

"So are storm giants," Hel said. "But frost giants tend to be taller and thinner." Angrboða had been half storm giant on her father's side, and although Hel had inherited nothing of her mastery over lightning, her height was entirely her mom's fault.

"And our old king, Útgarða-Loki, had his daughter, King Laufey, with a mountain giant," Aurvandil continued, "Mountain giants all have fair, curly hair and ruddy cheeks when they take on the guise of æsir."

"That explains a lot," Thor mumbled under his breath.

Hel tugged his cape curiously. "What?"

"Nothing." He gave her a distracted smile. "It's just – it explains why Loki almost always had to resort to seiðr to get his hair to behave."

'_Thor didn't know about Dad,'_ Hel remembered.'_Time for damage control, just in case.'_

She stopped dead and was immediately almost pulled off her feet thanks to the hold she had on Thor's cape. He stopped as well, walking right back to her and placing his hand on her shoulder. "Hel?"

"I should probably be sorry that I didn't tell you when I found out, but I'm not," she whispered. She widened her eyes, and hidden in the folds of her skirt, she gave the side of her thigh a vicious pinch to make them water. "I didn't know until the day after you showed up on Earth, and I was still so mad at you, but even with all that, I couldn't stop thinking about you as my uncle, because all my memories of you from Dad were of you as his brother. If you don't want me to call you Uncle, I won't, just don't hurt Fen–"

Thor crushed her to his armored chest in an embrace that was just shy of painful. "No, Hel," he breathed. "No, never. Loki is my brother, always and forever, just as Fenrir is _your_ brother, and you are my only niece. However we ended up as family, whatever the circumstances, I promise you that I will not disavow you, and I will never, ever hurt my nephew again."

"Really?" Her voice was small and uncertain, the emotionally fragile child rather than the queen of a realm. Behind Thor's back, Aurvandil gave her an admiring look.

"Really," he said firmly.

Fenrir was right. There was something profoundly odd about being reassured by Thor of all people that everything would be okay, and yet it felt strangely right. Her dad would probably approve, if he were here.

"I believe you," she told his breastplate. "Um. Not that I don't appreciate the hug, Uncle, but I'm kind of having trouble breathing."

He let go of her immediately. "We can't have you passing out again, not when you've only just woken up."

"Awake is good," Hel agreed. "So, where are we going?"

"To the council chambers," Thor said, resuming his walk. "The conditions to be agreed upon before any peace talks can begin have yet to be finalized. We have been waiting for you."

Hel looked up at Aurvandil, who was staring grimly ahead, his previous brief show of humor long gone. "Uncle," she said slowly, "Who's going to be there?"

Thor winced. "The AllFather will be present, of course, as will Lady Sif and the Warriors Three," he started. "Heimdall and your seiðmaðr Thjazi, Njörðr Yngvason of the Vanir, a few of my brothers…."

"Vili and Vé Borrson will be there," Aurvandil interrupted with a low growl, naming Odin's brothers. Hel could easily understand his anger.

"And which of your brothers will be joining us?" Hel asked.

"Bragi, Baldr, Meili, and–" Thor mumbled the last names under his breath.

"I'm sure I misheard you," Hel said. "I could have sworn you just said Týr and Víðarr." She knew it was up to Odin to pick his representatives, not Thor, but she still felt vaguely betrayed by the news. Unsurprised, but betrayed.

"I know it isn't much comfort to hear, but I think my elder brothers will surprise you," Thor said. "As you gave me a chance, will you extend the same to them?"

"They killed my _mother_," Hel said flatly.

"We are all obedient warriors in the service of the AllFather," Thor said. "No matter the order handed down. Though Týr and obedience do not keep the same company, these days."

Hel privately thought that was a very easy way to get your subjects to hate you. She refrained from saying as much, but her opinion was written all over her face, and Thor sighed and said, "At least for the sake of seeing the peace talks succeed, will you withhold judgment? For me?"

"For Dad," Hel said grudgingly. "He had nice things to say about them." Surprisingly nice things, actually, so nice that when she thought about what his opinion of them was and what they'd done only a decade and a half later, the cognitive dissonance that ensued was enough to make her head hurt.

Thor gave her a grateful smile. "If nothing else, this promises to be interesting enough that I shall not be tempted to fall asleep for once."

"If you start to fall asleep," Hel said, looking down at his rather appallingly insufficient greaves, "I will kick you right in the shins. Don't think I won't."

"Considering that our rather inauspicious introduction began with you rendering me unconscious, I have no doubts that you'll carry through with your threat," Thor said.

"There you are!" a clear, carrying voice called out.

Hel looked back up to see an almost aggravatingly beautiful ás not yet out of adolescence, with soft golden curls and bright blue eyes and the beginnings of a reddish-gold beard on his jaw. "You couldn't have sent a message letting us know when she woke?" he continued as he hurried down the hall toward them. "Father is driving us all beyond the bounds of sanity with his impatience. Hello and well met, by the way, Queen Hel," he said, turning abruptly to Hel and offering her a sincere smile as he bowed over her hand. "I'm your uncle–"

"Meili," Hel realized. Her dad's words echoed in her head: _'Meili is the youngest of us, and the most exasperatingly energetic. He's perhaps a bit too enamored with his own reflection, but too young and too good-natured for it to do any harm.'_ She returned his smile, somewhat comforted by his friendly greeting, and by her dad's endorsement. Her dad's information on the sons of Odin might be outdated, but at least she had a good starting point for how to personalize her approach to each one. "My secondhand memory of what you should look like is way out of date. You were a lot younger when Dad smuggled me to Midgard."

"Not even four hundred," Meili confirmed.

Far too young to have had anything to do with all the awful things that had happened to her family, Hel thought. He and Baldr had been the equivalent of ten and twelve years old when Fenrir was bound and banished, and according to her brother, hadn't been present due to their youth; scholarly Bragi and blind Höðr had been absent as well. That gave her four relationships significantly less fraught with complications and bad blood.

"And he's still so irritating," Thor teased gently. He reached out and tugged at one of Meili's curls. "Irritatingly _pretty_."

Meili scowled and slapped Thor's hand away. "Off!"

"And vain," Thor added. "Though that's only become worse since ásynjur have begun to pay attention to him."

"Ignore him," Meili advised Hel. "I always do."

Their banter had a strained edge to it, almost as if they were just going through the motions. They were faking normalcy for her sake, she realized, and she was touched despite herself. Meili's smile didn't seem as painful as her own, but his eyes were faintly rimmed in red.

The reason for his sorrow came to her like a lump of ice dropping heavily in her stomach._ 'Of course.'_

Thor hadn't known until she'd told him; apparently no one knew. To everyone else, it had only been thirty-six hours since Loki had –

'_Say it.'_

– Died. To her, it had been an eternity since something much worse had happened.

Hel looped her arm through Meili's, reluctantly sympathetic for her youngest uncle. "Shame on you, Uncle, for abusing your little brother like that," she chided Thor with a wink. "It goes against all the rules in the Older Sibling Handbook. I know I've never been so horrible to Fen."

"What about that time last year," Aurvandil suggested, "When he, Hyrrokkin, and Skaði got into your–"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Hel said firmly.

"Here we are," Thor announced, stopping outside a pair of enormous golden double doors flanked by two silent einherjar. "Remember, Hel, you have more than just friends or allies here. You have family."

"In this family, that's not actually comforting at all," Hel muttered.

"Are you ready?" Aurvandil asked. "Or do you need a moment?"

"No. Yes. Wait." She looked up at Thor and gestured to the doors. "What am I walking into? Don't make me go in there blind."

"Thor told us – his brothers – everything," Meili said. "He told us of you and Fenrir, of your willingness to shed blood alongside the warriors of Asgard and of Fenrir's true nature. He told us of how Loki hid you amongst the people of Midgard out of fear of losing another child. He told us –"

"Loki wept," Thor said. "When we fought, he wept, and he knew not why. Then, when you broke Mother's galdr, he knew the reason for his tears, and he fought like a man possessed. I recognized him, Hel. For a moment, I knew him as the brother he once was. Had you been able to finish, we would surely have the Loki of old with us today."

"He may no longer be with us, but you are," Meili said, "And we will honor our brother by showing his daughter the love we would give any of our other nieces or nephews."

"Even though Dad's adopted? And a jötunn?" Hel asked.

"Even so," Meili said.

Thor groaned. "I can't believe I forgot you don't know."

"In that case, I'm good to go," Hel said. "Let's do this."

Meili nodded to the einherjar. "Forgot what?"

Thor's answer was lost to the heavy thud of the doors opening, and with Meili to her left, Thor to her right, and Aurvandil bringing up the rear, Hel crossed over the threshold and entered the lion's den.

* * *

_Enjoy!_


End file.
